Sometime during the 1960s, the mirror breaks for Spanish narrative. Such works as Luis Martín Santos's Tiempo de silencio (Time of Silence, 1962), Juan Goytisolo's Señas de identidad (Marks of Identity, 1966), Miguel Delibes's Cinco horas con Mario ('Five Hours with Mario', 1966), José María Guelbenzu's El mercurio ('Mercury', 1968), Camilo José Cela's Vísperas, festividad y octava de San Camilo del año 1936 en Madrid (San Camilo in 1936: The Eve, Feast, and Octave of St. Camillus of the Year 1936 in Madrid, 1969) and, most radically, Juan Benet's Volverás a Región (Return to Region, 1967) wreak havoc on the reality, idea, and ideal of realism. To different degrees, and from often considerably different ideological positions, each of these works twists, blurs, stretches, smashes, or scoffs at mimetic representation, communicability, and referentiality. Language, turned into its own object, becomes opaque, restive, polyvalent, and at times even purposeless. The trend is solidified in the early 1970s with the publication of Goytisolo’s Reivindicación del conde don Julián (Count Julián, 1970), Benet’s Una meditación (A Meditation, 1970) and Un viaje de invierno (‘A Winter’s Journey’, 1972), Gonzalo Torrente Ballester’s La saga/fuga de J. B. (‘The Saga/Fugue of J. B.’, 1972), Juan Marsé’s Si te dicen que caí (The Fallen, 1973), Luis Goytisolo’s Recuento (‘Recount’, 1973), and Juan Goytisolo’s Juan sin tierra (Juan the Landless, 1975).