Señas de identidad [Marks of Identity] is the detailed and intimate, yet broad and panoramic exploration of a personal crisis. Álvaro Mendiola, the author and protagonist (or perhaps Unamuno's term "agonist" would be more appropriate) portrays his own experience as a member of a specific generation of young Spaniards who were born during the thirties, and for whom the Civil War is one of their childhood memories. He is the descendant of a tradition-bound family of industrialists and landowners whose values he despises…. The complex contradictions between these profound roots in a reactionary and dying social class, and Álvaro's conscious efforts to align himself sincerely and integrally with progressive social and political causes are what impell him toward the crisis of conscience that he attempts to explain and understand in this extensive self-examination. (p. 3)

Álvaro writes this complex autobiography as he looks back upon the experience of...