Product Description

Año 1320, en Navarcles, en la masía próspera de Bernat Estanyol se celebra la boda de éste con Francesca. Sin embargo, la llegada del señor feudal, Llorenç de Bellera, reclamando su derecho de pernada sobre la joven, será el principio de una serie de calamidades para los Estanyol: Francesca jamás perdonará a su marido que no haya evitado el abuso. El señor De Bellera le requiere para servir como nodriza de su hijo recién nacido, hasta el punto, de descuidar a su propio bebé, Arnau. Bernat decide raptar a su hijo y huir a Barcelona para conseguir la ciudadanía que lo acredite como hombre libre y no siervo de Bellera. Acude a su hermana, casada con un rico ceramista, Grau Puig, que a regañadientes acepta ayudarlos. Bernat trabaja como obrero mientras Arnau se cría con sus primos primero y luego con su padre en el taller. Pasa los días correteando por la ciudad y conoce a Joan, un niño de su edad cuya madre ha sido emparedada por adúltera. Ambos niños, hermanados y cómplices, se sienten fascinados por la construcción de la iglesia de Santa María del Mar y se convierten en devotos de la virgen en la cual encuentran el consuelo de sus madres ausentes. Se hacen amigos de los bastaixos, los estibadores que acarrean desinteresadamente pesadas piedras para la construcción de la Iglesia. Hay hambruna en Barcelona, y Bernat es expulsado de su trabajo por meterse en revueltas callejeras y acaba siendo colgado y expuesto en plaza pública ante la desesperación de los dos niños. Por la noche Arnau con la complicidad de Joan prende fuego al cadáver de su padre y decide entrar a trabajar con los bastaixos, colaborando en la construcción de la iglesia de la virgen a quien venera. Joan entretanto estudia para dominico..
Cuando la guerra estalla, Arnau no duda en prestar ayuda al rey Pedro III bloqueando el paso al enemigo, el rey Pedro Cruel de Castilla, con sus barcos mercantes, lo que le vale el reconocimiento real, una baronía y la mano de la prohijada del rey, Leonor. Este matrimonio será el principio de su desgracia : una mujer que lo desea ardientemente y a quien él no desea, la joven y bella Mar enamorada de él y tal vez él de ella, Joan convertido en un sacerdote de la Inquisición y que reprueba su vida, una conspiración de los nobles que lo condenan por favorecer a los campesinos y entre los que se encuentra el hijo de Llorenç de Bellera y sus primos los Puig. Una conspiración que culmina cuando Arnau es denunciado a la Santa Inquisición por su mujer por no cumplir con sus deberes conyugales y por supuestos amores prohibidos con una judía. Todo parece conspirar contra Arnau, y mientras la construcción de Santa María del Mar sigue prosperando, su vida parece desmoronarse...
Extraordinario retrato de la época medieval en Cataluña, la veneración a la Virgen del Mar y la construcción de la Iglesia, de los gremios y barrios de la ciudad de Barcelona, de las luchas de clases entre obreros, campesinos y señores feudales, la xenofobia contra la judería, el peso de la Inquisición. Historia, intrigas sociales, venganza, guerra, conspiración y amor en un fresco de época que sólo tiene una comparación: Los pilares de la tierra.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62477 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-07
• Released on: 2006-11-07
• Original language: Spanish
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

Customer Reviews

Worthy of 5
In 14th Century Spain, socially chained to the regimens of nobility and a single faith, a boy is left to die. Rescued, cast off, humiliated, deceived, befriended, the boy and the man he becomes struggles for independence and freedom. Life is starkly brutal, sprinkled by boundless acts of kindness and generosity, and flashes of love. The novel delivers a gut wrenching blow time and time again. Ideal for readers with a passion for history and well schemed human drama.

Great historical detail -- Review based on Brazilian edition.
The recent translation from Spanish into Portuguese of La Catedral del Mar, by Ildefonso Falcones, a Catalonian lawyer in his first venture in the literary world, has been well received here in Rio de Janeiro, and it became the topic for my November book club's discussion.

The book is set in Catalonia in the 14th c. and has as its subject the building of the Gothic Cathedral mentioned in the title. It also relates the importance of this building to Barcelona and how society, from noble to serfs, was affected by the construction of the church. In the meanwhile we are given what I would call one of the best series of history lectures describing life in the middle ages. To give a solid structure to the text we follow the life of Arnau Estanyol who was born a serf and ended a baron. In this manner we can understand the daily duties of serfs, free men, to merchants and money lenders. We see the beginning of the Church's Inquisition, the life in the Juderia [ Jewish neighborhood], the life and concerns of religious men, of free men, the way a mercantile city worked and the rights and obligations both of nobles and free citizens. Prejudices and values of all social layers are brought to the foreground.

And yet, despite so much information, this is an interesting, fast-paced and easy to read book with only a couple of passages that could have been more succinct. I am referring here to a few explanatory dialogs that were chosen in a clear attempt to give the reader the necessary information about the era and its manners. This is no way diminshes the pleasure of reading this novel, which was a true best seller in Spain, and responsible for the appearance of new tour routes covering Barcelona and the Catalonian areas mentioned in the book.

The real surprise was to discover how different Barcelona was in relation to its companion merchant sea ports, with a large population of free men.
Surprising also is the depth of knowledge demonstrated by Mr. Falcones, and his ability to carry through this almost 600 page novel, with such diverse topics.

I'll gladly wait for Mr. Falcones' next novel. And I know that millions of other people will also have great expectations for his next work.

Contrived plot in 14th century Barcelona
(Spoiler) This is a historical novel set in 14th century Barcelona. Since I like historical novels as well as Spain and Barcelona, I was quickly attracted by this book and read the Dutch translation as soon as it came out. It relates the life of Arnau from his lowly birth on his father's farm, his subsequent flight to Barcelona after being pursued by the landlord and his rapid career from carrying stone to the building site of the Santa Maria del Mar to joining the local nobility as a baron. Arnau is the hero of the story; he is portrayed as a humble man without any ambitions, who yet somehow manages to become the richest man in Catalan. This discrepancy makes the plot seem a bit contrived; the author needs a rich Jewish merchant (whose daughter's life is saved by Arnau) to set Arnau up as moneylender by providing him with capital and a Moorish slave who is a financial expert. Therefore it seems as if life is happening to Arnau, rather than being lived by him. The plot lacks credibility in more places, ranging from a character's rebuke of Arnau being filthy and smelly after a stint in jail (nobody washed in the Middle Ages and everybody smelled like hell) to the romantic love between Arnau and his stepdaughter Mar (which teenage girl wants to marry her stepfather who she lived with since her childhood?), to Arnau applying 21st century morals in Medieval times. Also I found the style of writing and dialogues a bit clumsy here and there (although this could have been the Dutch translation) and the characters one-dimensional. The most interesting theme of this book could have been the relationship between Arnau and his brother Joan who joins the Inquisition; however the author doesn't go very deep in elaborating the conflict between the two brothers. Some good things worth mentioning are the descriptions of the historical and cultural background, the workings of trade and finance and the treatment of Jews in Medieval Europe. Some reviewers of this book wrote that this is the best book they've read; they probable haven't read Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, which is a much better historical novel set in Barcelona.