Brujas

At the beginning of the Modern Age, a witch hunt took place in Europe in which hundreds of thousands of people were persecuted, the vast majority of them women, and some sixty thousand were murdered. What do we know about the damned? And of his accusers? And, above all, what could be the reason for such madness? Adela Muñoz Páez, one of today's most brilliant essayists, offers answers to these questions and explores the process, orchestrated for centuries by the Church, that turned women into scapegoats for an extraordinarily misogynistic society. Contrary to popular belief, the most aggressive persecutions did not take place in Spain, the cruelest punishments were not imposed by the ecclesiastical courts, and the Inquisition was not the executing arm of the hunt, but the main opponent of it. The text also deals with heresies, papal bulls, grimoires, exorcisms and spells, and recalls the Salem and Zugarramurdi witch trials, as well as the history of their persecutors and defenders. Although there were no covens or witch flights, there was pain and death in the bonfires lit throughout Europe at the time. On behalf of the witches whose voices will never be heard, we must help curb the superstition and hatred that continue to claim tens of thousands of lives today.