His main novel is the experimental "nivola" (how he called his novels) Niebla. It is a post-modernist work where he questions the relationship between the life and art and tries the border between fiction and reality. At some stage the fourth wall in the novel is shattered into pieces. He used a similar approach in many of his later works.
His philosophy is centered around the conflict between reason and religion, and especially the fear of death and the role that both approaches take on the matter. He was a sort of Agnostic, which was extremely rare and frown upon in early 20th century Spain, but at the same time, he couldn't deny the powerful allure of religion and how it tackles the fear of death with the promise of an eternal afterlife, which has led authors to call him a Christian Existentialist (albeit not the same kind as those examples who were actual Christians). He's usually considered a pessimist thinker, who embodies better than most the state of mind his country went through during his lifetime.
And this is not to say little. Unamuno's political position evolved along with Spain throughout his life: initially somewhat in favor of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, he turned against him and supported the Second Spanish Republic, then became disappointed with it and supported the Nationalist rebels during the infamous Spanish Civil War, then became disillusioned with them too and switched to the Republic again, and died shortly after. It's heavily speculated that he got severely depressed in his last days, which put him in a state of mind that at the very least accelerated his demise.
Bibliography
- Paz en la guerra (1897)
- Amor y pedagogía (1902)
- Niebla (1914)
- Abel Sánchez (1917)
- La tía Tula (1921)
- San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1930)
