El año de La República

Madrid, February 1873. Amadeo abdicates and the Republic is proclaimed in Spain. In those days, Fernando Besora, director of the evening newspaper La Iberia, whom we already met in Blood on the street of the Turk, receives a mysterious young man, Alonso Figueroa, who proposes to investigate the disappearance of two valuable books from the National Library . His investigations will lead him on the trail of an enigmatic woman related to a subject who has appeared hanging in an attic on Calle de la Luna. The political life of Madrid is agitated by the threat of a coup d'état, the differences between the Republicans themselves and the news of the Carlist war and that of Cuba. Besora will be a witness in the Congress of Deputies of heated debates, splendid speeches and striking situations in which personalities such as Pi y Margall, Castelar or Salmerón participate. He will also experience first-hand the cantonal movement whose epicenter is Cartagena, where passions overflow. Through these pages we will also get to know the Madrid of gatherings in cafes. Besora went to one of them, El Suizo, and met with writers such as Galdós, who began publishing his National Episodes that year, Valera, Zorrilla or Mesonero Romanos, with politicians such as Cánovas del Castillo and Morayta, with painters such as Casado del Alisal... It talks about politics and also about literature and art.