I always knew that one day I would return to these streets to tell the story of the man who lost his soul and his name in the shadows of that Barcelona, sunk in the troubled sleep of an era ruled by ash and silence. These are fiery pages, written under the protection of the city of the damned, words imprinted in the memory of one who came back from the dead with a promise nailed to his heart and the price of a curse. The curtain rises, the audience falls silent, and before the shadow that inhabits his destiny descends from the mechanisms that move the theater’s scenery, a group of good spirits enters the stage with a comedy on their lips and that blessed innocence of the man who, believing the third act is the last, comes to tell us a Christmas story without knowing that, as he turns the last page, the ink of his breath will slowly and relentlessly carry him into the heart of darkness.

Barcelona, December 1957. That year, during Christmas, every day dawned with frost and a leaden atmosphere. A bluish twilight painted the city and passersby hurried by with their collars turned up to their ears, drawing shapes in the cold with their steaming breath. Few were those who, in those days, paused to gaze at the window of Sempere & Sons, and even fewer dared to enter and ask about that lost book that had been waiting for them all their lives and whose sale, putting poetic inspiration aside, could have contributed to improving the dubious financial situation of the bookstore.

“I think today is the day. Today our luck will change,” I announced with the sense of euphoria brought by the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in liquid form. My father, who since eight in the morning had been wrestling with the accounting books, performing sleight of hand with pencil and eraser, looked up from the counter and observed the customers hurrying by and disappearing down the street.