Requiem for a Spanish Peasant

Requiem for a Spanish Peasant (Réquiem por un campesino español) is a famous short novel in twentieth-century Spanish literature by Spanish writer Ramón J. Sender. It conveys the thoughts and memories of Mosén Millán, a Catholic parish priest, as he sits in the vestry of a church in a nameless Aragonese village, preparing to conduct a requiem mass to celebrate the life of a young peasant named Paco killed by the Nationalist army a year earlier, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. As he waits, his thoughts are interrupted by the occasional comings and goings of an altar boy, who hums to himself an anonymous ballad.

The novel was originally published under the title Mosén Millán; however, the author changed the title to shift the focus from the priest to its peasant protagonist.