Abstract:
This article revisits the first works published by Ricardo Menéndez Salmón — a Spanish (Asturian) author — which have been somewhat overlooked within a body of work that now comprises fourteen novels — the most recent, Arca, was published in 2026 — and three collections of short stories. We examine the fictional village of Promenadia, the author’s own creation, as it is constructed and evolves across the novels Los arrebatados (2003), in which it first appears, La noche feroz (2006) and Derrumbe (2008), taking as our guiding thread the idea that the foundation of writing is grounded in the foundation of the fictional place. More specifically, we seek to show how, by situating his early novels within a literary tradition to which homage is paid, while at the same time contributing to the forging of a distinctive literary identity, Promenadia, in its novelistic construction, constitutes one of the foundations upon which the author's early work rests.
Keywords: Ricardo Menéndez Salmón, Foundation, Literary tradition, Literary identity.