“Viaje en autobús" de José Pla. Formes del tanaturisme

I analyze a book by Josep Pla, Viaje en autobus, which is representative of exploring nearby territories, areas of proximity. Pla uses the bus to travel much slower, right after the Spanish Civil War, and his book becomes a manifesto in favor of slowness. Travelling through your own country was not an invention of Josep Pla. Before him, especially during Romanticism, many other writers did hat. What is remarkable in this book is that Pla makes use of an established narrative form to explore with closed eyes, to see what he wants thus eliminating unpleasant realities. His pilgrimages through well know places focuses on disappearance, the fragment, the ruin, as a sort of funerary monuments of a disappeared world. Traveling and mourning has an undeniable political value and is an original version of "tanaturisme."