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The inability to come to terms with traumatic experiences is felt most acutely by the individual, but is also a social phenomenon, perpetuated by the disjunction of an 'official history' and that experienced locally by the individual. In light of the recuperation of Spanish Civil War histories and the need to address the unspoken past, this article focuses on the recent work of Juan Goytisolo, a writer renowned for blurring the autobiographical, the political and the literary. After brief reference to Goytisolo's earlier work, the essay examines three of his more recent novels, La cuarentena (1991), El sitio de los sitios (1995) and Las semanas del jardín (1997), identifying the personal and communal ties to the traumatic past that are realized in Goytisolo's work and revealing the processes by which Goytisolo consciously and unconsciously evokes his past while engaging his readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]