Eleven years after first putting the Baztán Valley, Dolores Redondo returns to the stage of success with ‘Those who do not sleep. Nash’, a detective novel which traces traces of witchcraft in the region and real cases from the recent Spanish black chronicle.
The author of San Sebastian, who He has sold more than five and a half million novels and whose Baztán trilogy was adapted for cinema and translated into 39 languages, expands her literary universe and immerses herself in what she herself calls “mystical black”, which she considers to be a own genre supported in mythology and legends of the region.
Her mysticism It has a real basis, a religion predating Christianity of which we find references in the names of places such as “The Road to Hell, the Fountain of Lamias, the Well of the Madwoman or numerous sorginkobas -witches’ caves-” .
During a meeting with a group of journalists, Round (San Sebastian, 1969) assured that he does not always see himself doing this, “my love it’s not detective novels, it’s literature“, said.
But for now he has a rope for a while, “Those who don’t sleep. Nash’ is the second part of a quartet, ‘The quiet valleys’which began with “Waiting for the Deluge” (2022), the story of a serial killer that took place between Glasgow and Bilbao.
Her new novel does not tell a real crime, but is inspired by several, mainly the case of Josefa Sagardía Goñia woman who disappeared in August 1936 with her six children and pregnant with the seventh and whose remains were found in the Legarrea sinkhole, in Gaztelu (Navarra) in 2016.
The affair, literally told by José Mari Esparza in the book “La sima”, has always been surrounded by mysterybecause it did not correspond to the usual settling of scores at the start of the war in a city where everyone was on the same side.
Redondo connects it to witchcraft stories which, since Antiquity, have surrounded this enclave. “We are probably facing the last execution for witchcraft in Spain,” he suggests. “It was said that she practiced the ancient religion, that she did not go to mass, that she was beautiful even though she was expecting her seventh child and that she made her potions.”
During the excavation workwhich had begun in 2014, was found the body of another young man who disappeared in 2008, a case which is also transferred to the novel with a background of abuse, alongside other real references such as the miscarriage of justice of the the Wanninkhof affair or the covid crisis, since the plot takes place between February and March 2020.
Sisterhood, matriarchy and rebellious women
THE main novelty of this delivery is a new female character, a forensic psychologist named Nash – after the acronym of the forensic code for causes of death: natural, accidental, suicide or homicide – who allows Redondo to tackle the investigation of a different point of view.
Also Amaia Salazar appearsthe provincial police protagonist of the Baztán trilogy and the Mitxelena women, a mother and her two daughters who run a funeral home, Nash’s main allies, who serve him to talk about fraternity and pay tribute to the “irreverent” and the “restless” .
“I always try to describe this matriarchal society that I was born and raised in and that I love very much,” he says. Although he admits that there are negative aspects such as “ttuku-ttuku” (gossip), the other side of the coin is that in these societies “the abuse within the family environment towards women is less, because it is impossible for this to happen without other women realizing it.
La Redondo, one more character
Elizondo it’s a town in northern Navarra of just over 3,000 inhabitants, crossed by the Baztán river and full of stately homes with heraldic shields, but in recent years it has become a new mecca for literary tourism.
Redondo, who wrote the book here and I often visit the cityhasn’t really gotten used to seeing his scenes unfold during guided tours. “Sometimes I go to buy bread, I pass by and I see them on the bridge taking photos, I hear them talking and it’s as if they are talking about another person, about the concept that They have La Redondo.”
This strangeness in itself is reflected in the novel where La Redondo appears as a character mentioned by the village women in a conversation.
“Let’s see, she’s nice but she’s also strange, right? Look at the things she writes,” one woman said. Another mentions an interview in which La Redondo assures that she crime This “compensates” for him because writing about it helps him “sift through unbearable realities.”
