The Eñe Festival presents "For Whom the Bells Are Silent" and other stories from La Hiruela, the first volume of "The Place Told"

2026/07/01

The Eñe Festival presents For Whom the Bells Are Silent and Other Stories by La Hiruela, the first volume in the series El lugar contado (The Place Told ), is an initiative in which prominent authors from the national literary scene transform the memories of different towns across Spain into words and fiction. Pilar Adón, Juan Carlos Galindo, Ana Merino, Benjamín Prado, and Marta Sanz are the authors of the five stories that make up this first installment, based on the oral testimonies of residents of this town in the Sierra del Rincón mountains, collected since the autumn of 2015 by the writer, philologist, and specialist in traditional literature, Ana Cristina Herreros.

The publication will be presented next Saturday, July 4th, at 12:00 pm, in La Hiruela, with a narrated walk through some key points of the town and a conversation between Juan Carlos Galindo, Jesús Ruiz Mantilla and Ana Cristina Herreros.

From different tones, styles, and genres, the folk tales that have shaped the memory of one of the least populated municipalities in the Community of Madrid intertwine with fiction through the work of five authors. The "privileged" exodus from the city to the village of a retired teacher, or the story of Susi, the fruit vendor, in his van, intersects with loneliness and the search for a place in the world; the erratic pealing of the church bells, which, according to legend, a storm made capricious, is interwoven with the story of a modern-day Wendy who rediscovers her youth in La Hiruela; and the residents, the mayor, the police, the electrician, and the priest coexist with strange noises at night, with La Corza (a mythical creature), ghosts, and the salt that melts the snow each winter to prevent the village from becoming isolated.

With the collaboration of the La Hiruela Town Council, this initiative of the Eñe Festival aims to provide a platform for stories written by renowned authors based on the memories of those who continue to inhabit the villages of our region. In the words of Ana Cristina Herreros, listening to these stories is essential so that rural Spain remains alive with the voices of people who have so much to tell and who make it possible for the story of this place to continue to be told. For his part, the mayor of La Hiruela, Antonio Viedma Rojas, emphasizes that the way a town sings, eats, loves, works, or inhabits its land forms part of a heritage that transcends the town itself, becoming fixed in its collective memory. He expresses his gratitude that the Eñe Festival and La Fábrica initiative has offered them the opportunity to share their story of La Hiruela and to see how literature can capture a glimpse of the life and memories of its inhabitants.

The first volume brings together five top-tier authors. Pilar Adón (The Sacred Piece), winner of the National Narrative Prize and the Critics' Prize for Of Beasts and Birds, is a novelist, poet, translator, and editor at Impedimenta. Juan Carlos Galindo (Death Tastes Like Salt), a journalist for El País and creator of the crime fiction blog Elemental, is one of the leading figures in the genre in Spain. Ana Merino (Wendy in La Hiruela), winner of the 2020 Nadal Prize for The Map of Affections, is a writer, poet, playwright, and comics specialist. Benjamín Prado (For Whom the Bells Are Silent), a novelist, poet, and essayist, has received awards such as the Hiperión and the Andalucía Novel Prize, and his work has been translated into more than ten languages. And Marta Sanz (Carrots), PhD in Philology and winner of the Herralde, Tigre Juan, and Ojo Crítico prizes, explores social and personal tensions with a critical and singular voice.