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<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of Literary Wednesdays, the Atalaya Ateneo Club of the town of Cieza has organized, in collaboration with Alfaqueque Ediciones, the presentation of the book Cieza. 1477. The Shadow of the Lightning, by Cieza-born writer Antonio Balsalobre. The event will take place on Wednesday, May 8, at 8:00 p.m., on the Balc\u00f3n del Muro (Balcony of the Wall), next to the remains of the fortress. Fernando Fern\u00e1ndez Villa, editor, and the author of the book will speak.<\/p>\n
After Maryam de Siyasa (2020), Balsalobre returns with this new historical novel to delve into the turbulent 15th century. A century that witnessed the civil wars between Fajardos for control of the Kingdom of Murcia, in which Cieza was involved, and already in 1477, the bloody Nasrid uprising in this town and the captivity suffered in the dungeons of the Alhambra by the more than five hundred Ciezans who were taken hostage.<\/p>\n
For the book's editor, Fern\u00e1ndez Villa, this is "an ambitious, exciting, and captivating novel about love, heartbreak, strength, and also the weaknesses of men and women facing their destiny."<\/p>\n
The author confesses that this novel, which he has been working on intensively for the past four years, had been on his mind ever since he and Fernando Fern\u00e1ndez Villa participated as actors more than twenty years ago in the performance of Carmen Carrillo's play Chronicle and Legend of an Invasion Foretold.<\/p>\n
Balsalobre, moreover, sought to offer us in this work his own social and human perspective on that tragedy that marked this town. A critical look at a society of profound social inequalities, in which not everyone could afford to pay the ransom demanded. In fact, in 1492, the year of the capture of Granada, there were still Ciezan captives in the dungeons of the Alhambra.<\/p>\n
These are a few glimpses of what the reader will find in this novel: "Dawn of April 6, 1477. Land of borders. Perfect storm. Truce agreed between Castile and Granada and broken by both sides. Abul Has\u00e1n sacks Cie\u00e7a... A castle destroyed twenty years earlier during the civil wars between Pedro Fajardo and his cousin Alonso the Brave for control of the Kingdom of Murcia. Nobles with bulimia for land and power. A defenseless people. A Nasrid king seeking revenge. A Major Adelantado who entrenches himself in Molina and does not come to the defense of the people of Ci\u00e9\u00e7a.<\/p>\n
An unstable Castilian throne. Isabella and Ferdinand, for "reasons of state," "ignore" the Ci\u00e7anos so as not to upset the King of Granada.<\/p>\n
Love and heartbreak. Sancho Mart\u00edn, a fickle scribe; Guiomar, a young woman yearning for freedom who knows the two sides of fortune; Manuela, an impetuous woman; Haddad, a Nasrid royal chronicler searching for his memory in Siyasa; Leila, an angry wife; Alejo and Baltasar, two friendly captains with parallel lives who end up at odds...<\/p>\n
A choral novel. A living history of Cie\u00e7a, the Kingdom of Murcia, and Castile.<\/p>\n
As expected, while remaining faithful to known history, Balsalobre combines fiction and reality in this novel. It thus combines real events and characters (Commander Gonzalo Tal\u00f3n, the Adelantado of Murcia, Pedro Fajardo, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Nasrid ruler Abul Has\u00e1n, and some Ciezan men and women with names and surnames, among many others), to whom the author has given a private life, with others who, although imaginary, are a faithful portrait of Cieza in those years.<\/p>\n
Admission to the presentation event on May 8 at the Balc\u00f3n del Muro is free.<\/p>\n
The novel has been published by Alfaqueque Ediciones, directed by Fernando Fern\u00e1ndez Villa.<\/p>\n
Antonio Balsalobre (Cieza, 1958). A founding member of the TrasCieza Local Studies Collective, part of the Atalaya-Ateneo Club of the Villa de Cieza, he has been actively involved in the publications produced by this association as a member of the editorial team since the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
A graduate in Hispanic Philology, he has taught Spanish Language and Literature in secondary education and French at the Official School of Languages. He is a columnist for the newspaper La Opini\u00f3n de Murcia and Cr\u00f3nicas de Siyasa. He has also been a contributor to Onda Regional de Murcia.<\/p>\n
In 1997, he won the First Prize for Short Stories at the III Francisco S\u00e1nchez Bautista Regional Literary Competition with the story De noche, en el azud.<\/p>\n
He has published with Alfaqueque Ediciones La Cieza de ayer. Stories, legends and other chronicles (2018), as well as the historical novel Maryam de Siyasa (2020), of which Cie\u00e7a. 1477. The shadow of the lightning can be considered a continuation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As part of Literary Wednesdays, the Atalaya Ateneo Club, in collaboration with Alfaqueque Ediciones, has organized the presentation of the book Cieza. 1477. The Shadow of Lightning.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13701,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13699\/revisions\/13701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciezaentumano.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}