This study has examined how Juan Marsé uses Catholic iconography to powerful effect in his novels to explore and subvert the ideologies of the Catholic Church, Spanish National Catholicism and Catalan Catholic Nationalism. It has considered both the broad background of Marsé’s depiction of popular religious culture in post-war Barcelona, and has focused discussion on specific discourses of Vatican II, on myths of biblical Paradise Gardens, and on individual icons. It draws attention to Marsé’s preoccupation with the extent to which religious ideology can permeate public and private life, yet at the same time, throughout my discussion I have emphasised that Marsé’s treatment of Catholic iconography is playful. In leaps of imaginative invention, always tinged with irony and often with nostalgia, he eagerly and mischievously exploits the wealth of a religious heritage towards which he remains ambivalent. His approach is summed up in a quotation from Nietzsche that prefaces Rabos de lagartija:

There is room here for debate – room for play – and a welcoming of openness to discussion. As a hybrid, Marsé plays across many boundaries of nationality, class and ideology, and his games with Catholic iconography demonstrate that hybrid freedom.

Storytelling is for Marsé a toy, a game and a narrative play area in which to try out strategies of subversion and to entertain. I have described play as a leap, an explosion of energy, as defying limits, as finding a ‘divine leeway’ for spontaneous, unrestrained, joyous experimentation, and I have argued that these are characteristics of Marsé’s storytelling games too. Play is also wicked, mischievous and provocative. It is Andrés and Martín in Encerrados scandalising passers-by in the Parc Güell with obscene songs sung loudly: ‘¡caritat caritat senyora, caritat pel meu germà, que va néixer sense braços i no se la pot pelà!’ (EJ, p. 58). It is Juanito Marés in El amante, contorted into the shape of the ‘araña-que-fuma’, hurtling at break-neck speed down a smart suburban street on an improvised go-cart, yelling the ragman’s cry ‘Hi ha cap peeeeeell de coniiiiiill…!’ – a war cry he will repeat at moments of rage or sexual orgasm.