When we look back at Spanish modern literary historiography it soon becomes evident that Spain's literary corpus as a whole was often and overly conceptualized as “different” in relation to the Western European canon. Inversely, when reviewing Spain's current literary critique on Spanish postmodern production – that is, from 1975 onwards – it is also strikingly evident that what is usually expressed is its “normalcy.”

Spain’s formerly assigned non-modern literary “difference” as well as its current post-modern “normalcy” cannot be understood as an isolated cultural phenomenon but, rather, as part of a broader constellation. Although profoundly cultural, the process-formation of “Spanish difference” or “Spanish normalcy,” as conceptual designators for the non-modern and the post-modern respectively, widely surpasseses the literary. It ultimately relates to Spain’s intervention vis à vis the history of capital development – Spain’s initial and increasing estrangement from modernity starting with the shift in imperial economic power in the late seventeenth century from the Spanish via the Netherlands to the English and ultimately, to Anglo-America, and its final plunge into the new contemporary post-modern world economy after 1975.