The Artieda File

People who live near Coruña railway station set their clocks, more or less accurately, according to when the Madrid Express pulls into the station like a herd of bison. The customers in Odilo Querentes’s photographic studio time how late it is. There’s the lamplighter Mungo Ures and the tram-driver Mamede Aneiros, the blind man Mateo Lan, the nightclub singer Trina, and Odilo’s assistant, Bibiana Brea. The men discuss football while complimenting Bibiana on her looks. They listen to Enrique Mariñas, a household name in Coruña, commentating on a match at Riazor stadium, which Franco has chosen to attend, but the broadcast is interrupted by members of the National Union for the Republic calling for a national strike in defence of democracy. It is the 1950s, and there is still resistance to Franco’s regime, especially among the Maquis, resistance fighters like Artieda whose aim is to undermine the regime and to bring down its leader in a game of cat and mouse that will not be without casualties. The plot thickens as the Maquis seek a way to reach Franco, who is taking his usual summer break in his native Galicia, and the reader is given a front-row seat to the action as it unfolds in different parts of the city, including its most emblematic building, the Tower of Hercules, a first-century Roman lighthouse at its northernmost tip.

Luís Rei Núñez is one of Galicia’s most successful writers. He has won two of Galicia’s most important literary awards, the Xerais for The Artieda File and the Blanco Amor for Mount Louro. He is also a poet, with seven published collections, a biographer and translator of Rafael Dieste, a classic of Galician literature, and the author of a very personal book about the Costa da Morte (Death Coast), Appointment in Finisterre.