Estremida memòria

The key to entering the houses of Mequinensa is a blood event that occurred on August 25, 1877, in peacetime after forty years of carlinades. Why the hell did people kill themselves if it wasn't for Charles of Bourbon or Isabella of Spain? The writer, installed at a table from 1995, assumes the functions of a researcher and scrapes, exhumes, analyzes with a fold of papers and the flow of his imagination, more generous than the Ebro. It is a great game of Cluedo that he proposes to us, with a different character in each chapter and a framework that the readers have the mission to put together. The game is sumptuous, between detective and archaeological. Once unearthed, the fragments take on life, color, movement; and here the fleshy arm of Amàlia appears, there the bed of the paralyzed Marta, and the scribe's mule who comes to do justice and already reaches the bend in the road where the murder was committed. As the novel progresses, it is all the women of Mequinensa that you see emerging from the dark abyss of time, their eyes shining with anguish for their executed men. The resurrection of the dead is a miracle that the great novels know how to work, no matter how disbelieved the author is. Instead of faith, put in it an unquenchable tenderness and curiosity for the humans who lived where you came into the world, and art such as only the most remarkable artists produce.