Bruno Blog

1951, in the midst of Francoism, was inaugurated “The City of the Boys”, an Learning Home in the Collserola Forest for orphaned and resourceless children. But what was sold as an exemplary institution, a replica of an innovative project, turned into hell for many of those who lived there. Grandpa Emilio between them. There it lost much more than innocence, and still suffers the consequences in secret today. At least until the day he hit his grandson. What kind of person is a child who, when he most needs love and attention from whom he should protect him, only receives screams, punishments and ill-treatment? This is a history of resilience; on the lights and shadows, own or otherwise, that set the limits on care in the first and third ages; on collective beliefs that confuse education with indoctrination or respect for authority; but, above all, it is a call to compassion: the last possible and most important form of love. Lifeguard for all.

In the middle of the 14th century, Barcelona still suffers the aftermath of the great plague. During this period of uncertainty and power vacuum, a group of women combats the implementation of Roman law, an important retreat from the laws that governed their ancestors.
L’Alexia, daughter of a merchant; la Ròmia, slave; la Genebre, nun of Sant Pere de Puel·les; la Caterina, apprentice painter; la Llorença, widow of a glassmaker; la Marta, weaver, and la Sança, capellera, will join together to raise another Barcelona where it is possible to light a new fire that will once again light the city. Many, anchored in a world that ends, will want to turn it off.
Meanwhile, Alexia’s brother Narcissus, a disciple of the painter Ferrer Bassa, will try to find meaning in his artistic concerns. He and Catherine will found the House of Obradors, a project aimed at putting into value new initiatives based on each other’s abilities. Everyone will have a place and can be both an apprentice and a teacher.
Fire lights, but also burns and leaves ashes. Ash contains the memory of what it has been and, if it falls into good shelter, it can be a seed of the future.
The legacy of the ashes is an exciting and inspiring story of fighting, of women able to show us that the essentials are indestructible.

Gaspar Hernandez’s most personal book This is my most personal book. A narrative set that has the radio as its truss. In part, a radio memoir, from an early announcer: I started at the age of nine, when my father, an electrician, set up a home broadcaster. Thanks to the radio, I overcame my shyness. Since then, for more than forty years, I have spoken almost every day before the microphone. I wanted to pay tribute to the radio and the spoken voice, at a time when podcasts are once again playing a leading role. Maybe we’re looking in the voice for an authenticity that doesn’t have the image, or the telematic encounters. Perhaps the voice is the true mirror of the soul.

NÈSTOR LUJÁN PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL NOVELS

An extraordinary woman who wants to be a surgeon, an impossible love, an insatiable struggle. An enlightening story of the Barcelona of the 14th century.

Barcelona, 1382. Francesca is a fifteen year old Christian girl who helps her grandmother Bonanada to work as a midwife. Her aunt teaches her the secrets of the trade and introduces her to the mastery of the remedial plants, but she does not have enough, and although she lives in a very humble environment, she has the firm determination to become a doctor and a surgeon. There is only one problem: this is a career reserved for men and making a place for herself is almost a folly.

Thanks to her job as a caregiver, she often visits the Call. There she will meet Astruc, a young boy from a group of doctors who wants to study medicine. They both agree to share their knowledge: Francesca will teach him everything she knows about plants and he will give her access to his books. But medicine is not her only passion: Francesca is in love with Martí, her childhood friend, and with this love she will start her adult life, an exciting life full of obstacles, love, betrayals and passions.

Based on a true story and with an absolutely enlightening narrative, Laia Perearnau masterfully takes us to the Barcelona of the 14th century, when illnesses were rife, and makes us vibrate with the life of an extraordinary woman, full of determination, who fought tirelessly against the limits imposed on the women of her time.

Can a love letter change a life or stop a war?

Would you wait for those words until the end of your days?

Madrid, 1936. Aurora has just come of age and works as a nurse in a troubled city that resists the fire and bombs of the war. In this times of violence, she decides to contribute in the Republican front and begins to write letter to a young soldier, Teófilo, thus becoming – like many other women of the time – a war godmother.

In each letter, the young men will find a refuge in which to express the fears and secrets they cannot say aloud while discovering a love they never imagined. However, in a war full of intrigue and espionage, where everyone is a suspect, the written word can be the most dangerous weapon…

When years later, isolated in the silence of the postwar period, Teófilo finds out that Aurora is still alive, he does not hesitate to try to find again the person who, amidst the fire and gunpowder, made love, calm and peace blossom in him.

This story is a tribute to all those women who took the word as a rifle and managed to grow in the line of fire the strength and hope of the soldiers.