The Spanish Civil War began on July 17, 1936, and ended on April 1, 1939. The war ended with the victory of the rebels and the breakdown of the Republican regime. This was the beginning of a long-lasting dictatorial period in Spain that would come to an end in 1975, with the death of Franco. The consequences of the war were severe. Spain was ruined; hundreds of thousands of people died; hundreds of thousands of people went into exile; Spain lost the representatives of the culture of the country who also went into exile with their people. After several months had passed in very painful circumstances in the concentration camps in France, Spanish exiles dispersed all over the world. Most of them went to Mexico, which became, in a sense, the capital of exile. At first, the exiles thought they would return home one day in the not-too-distant future. However, their existence in foreign lands lasted for decades. Most of them died in exile without having the chance to see their homeland before they passed. 

Spanish intellectuals soon gathered, at the beginning of the exile, to fight for their country. They gave lectures to tell the tragedy of Spain; they published literary journals and expressed in their writings their grief, anger, and hopes for saving the country. The political and literary activities continued without interruption. The Republican politicians of Spain were organized to help Spanish refugees on their arrival in Mexico. Spanish people were united in solidarity to keep alive the spirit of the country in exile. Life in a foreign land was, in the eyes of the exiles, an interval and they would soon return home. Meanwhile, they would try hard to keep and continue Spanish identity, culture, and traditions in exile. The language they used in their literary works was the manifestation of a deep sorrow for their lost country and loved ones and also a rebellion against those who took possession of the country with violence. The task was hard—the continuity of the culture and identity in exile. The language of political activities and literary works was shaped in the first decade around this goal.

Children also went into exile with their families. The youngest were two or three years old and the eldest were fifteen or sixteen years old. They went through some difficulties at the beginning of the exile. The families sent them to Spanish schools where they learned the culture of their country from the best teachers from Spain. The common themes spoken of at home were mainly those that revealed the pain of loss; but there was another life in the street, free from sorrow. The children grew up between two cultures and their identities were shaped in an intermediate zone between Spanish life and Mexican life. The families saw the children as a guarantee of continuity; however, they were not the main figures of the exile but they had inherited an obligatory situation. They learned about Spanish culture when they were young and about Mexican culture and other countries’ cultures at university. In time, they became respected engineers, medical doctors, historians, lawyers, anthropologists, and scientists in Mexican life. Some of them preferred to step into the life of literature. In their writings, they freed themselves from the obligations of an imposed language shaped by the pain of exile. Exile was an experience they carried but it did not shape their identities either in their social life or in their literary life. They were born in Spain and grew up in Mexico; the Spanish people did not see them as Spanish because they grew up in Mexico and the Mexican people did not see them as Mexican because they were born in Spain. In a way, they were both Spanish and Mexican but at the same time, they were neither Spanish nor Mexican. The last representatives of the Spanish exile of 1939 were called in Mexico the Hispanic-Mexicans or the Generation Nepantla, which meant a generation in between.