An Authorly Memo

For the Spain Story, which is mentioned in the last post, I have read in different avenues, not very intensively. Firstly there was a surface investigation of conservative religion in Spain, especially in the Franco era; then of events in 2007, setting up a timeline that I'll (hopefully) lead into 2008, when the story will happen on the eve of the financial crisis. Helpfully, the figure of the protagonist's father became a little sharper once I read about conservative religious circles, though I still don't know whether to make him more of a monarchist and a Catholic or a Catholic or a Catholic monarchist.

What hampers me a little in the imagining of the antihero's father's upbringing is that I had a fairly mild upbringing, and have no direct idea of the uptight, little-man institutions that might have been de rigueur (literally!) in Spain in the forties or earlier.

 I'll  figure out what the schools were like in Spain, anyway; while it might be irrelevant for the father, I'd thought of sending the main character to a military academy. But that feels wrong, and I can't plunk him into a gymnasium without finding out if Spain had any, first.

Still, in the past week I have been 'resting'; the digestion and application of the notes that I take seems as important as the taking.