In a small corner of the Galician coast, where the sea and the rain set the rhythm of daily life, Arantza Portabales returns to the Loeiro crimes with your new Novelty, «Murder at the priest's mill». The writer again sets the action in that fictional town that draws directly from Loira (MarÃn, Pontevedra), the place of her childhood and the most intense memories of her sentimental biography.
The work is installed in the heart of what is known as deep Galicia to unfold a brutal intrigue linked to a massacre that occurred in 1984a crime buried in silence and linked to the historical memoryA killer who is still alive four decades later. Portabales defines this title as his most mature and technically accomplished novel, a step forward within his narrative project set in Loeiro.
A crime at the Molino del Cura that scarred an entire town
The plot of "Murder at the Priest's Mill" begins on a night of 1984, when a savage massacre took place in Loeiro that shakes the foundations of the town. While the neighbors mourn the death of Berta, a nine-year-old girl, almost no one notices what is happening simultaneously in the old mill owned by the priest, a space full of shadows and secrets.
That setting, the Priest's Mill, becomes the symbolic epicenter of the novel: a secluded place where violence is perpetrated and at the same time silence is imposedPortabales builds an oppressive atmosphere around that building, in which every stone and every corner seems to hold a part of the truth that the people prefer not to look at directly.
One victim from that night remains particularly scarred: Alba Mariño, who survives with a huge physical scar and a mental void impossible to fill. Since childhood, her memory has been a devastated landscape, unable to order the events surrounding the tragedy, condemning her to a present plagued by vague fear and incomplete memories.
For forty years, Loeiro drags an unsolved crime and a community that knows more than it admitsDuring that time, the case fades into routine, but remains like a hidden wound, halfway between superstition, rumor, and collective guilt.
Alba Mariño: return to Loeiro and fight against oblivion
Decades after that night, Alba Mariño's life seems stuck in a present without anchors, until a news report about Loeiro is broadcast on the television news. It awakens an ancient fear that had never completely disappeared.That media impact acts as a trigger for her to make a radical decision at the age of fifty.
Alba chooses return to the coastal town to confront what he doesn't rememberEven knowing that this return exposes her to a past full of gaps and a community that has learned to live with silence. It's not just about recovering lost images, but about putting a name to the violence that marked her childhood.
His personal research is intertwined with an almost therapeutic process: reconstructing their identity from the gaps in memoryThe scar on his head ceases to be merely a physical sign and becomes a metaphor for a mental territory ravaged by trauma and the omissions of his environment.
Along the way, Alba realizes that the fear she carries is not only hers, but that It also belongs to a people who chose to remain silent.Every conversation, every averted glance, and every piece of information he manages to salvage reveals that Loeiro was hiding something too uncomfortable to bring to the surface.
Iria Santaclara and the Freijomil sisters: allies and shadows in Loeiro
To face such a complex case, Alba is not alone. She has the support of Sinda, nicknamed "the Gestapo", by César Araújo and researcher Iria SantaclaraThe detective who starred in the previous installment of the Loeiro Crimes, "Murder in the Pink House," returns. The author once again entrusts this character to guide the police investigation.
Iria delves into the web of secrets of the town with a mixture of professionalism and approachability, both inside and outside that community that protects itself. His presence allows the new case to be connected to the previous saga. by Portabales, maintaining the tone of a classic noir novel, but with a strong emotional charge.
At the center of the suspicions appear the sinister Freijomil sisters, granddaughters of the priest and almost spectral figures in the life of Loeiro. Locked away, dressed in mourning and barricaded against the world, these women embody the darkest part of the town: old grudges, moral rigidity and a way of understanding life marked by guilt and repression.
Portabales has described the Freijomil as very Lorca-esque, women trapped by a hostile environment and by their own decisionsAlso central to these stories is the figure of another Berta, a niece whose death was never fully explained, adding more layers of mystery and reinforcing the feeling that violence is inherited from generation to generation.
Violence against women and criticism of the town's structure
"Murder at the Priest's Mill" takes place in a landscape that, in real life, For Portabales it is almost a natural theme parkThe Loire, with its river, the sea, the clear water beach, and the green mountain we used to draw as children with colored pencils. However, this seemingly idyllic setting contrasts sharply with the harshness of the story.
The author emphasizes that she is facing a very violent novel, not only physically, but also structurally towards womenThe town itself looms over them, influencing their decisions, limiting their freedom, and sometimes pushing them toward extreme solutions. Loeiro acts almost as another character, a social organism that suffocates and monitors.
Characters like Alba, Iria Santaclara, or the Freijomil sisters show different sides of that collective pressure that falls on women in closed rural contextsThe novel does not only focus on solving the crime, but also explores how the community acts as a silent judge, punishing those who deviate from the norm or dare to question the established order.
Portabales does not justify those who kill in his stories, but he acknowledges that he tries to understand them and for the reader to also understand where that violence comes fromIts premise is that, sometimes, life becomes so complicated and painful that some people only see a way out in a spiral of aggression, an approach that adds nuance to the typical culprit and victim scheme.
The Loeiro Crimes saga and the location of "Murder at the priest's mill"
The new novel is part of the universe of the Loeiro Crimes, which began with "Murder in the Pink House"Although in publishing terms it is referred to as a trilogy, Portabales prefers to call it a saga, since each volume is self-contained and can be read independently, without needing to follow a strict order.
In this second title set in Loeiro, the writer feels that has taken the criminal capacity of the people to the extremeShe even jokes that she's already killed more people than a small village could possibly handle. Despite this, she insists that it's precisely in these kinds of places where she feels most comfortable and strong, because she likes to walk on the same ground as her characters.
Following "Murder at the Priest's Mill", the author plans to publish a third crime novel set in the same universeLater, he would move on to a more intimate work, moving away from the criminal undertones. In this way, Loeiro would become established as a coherent literary setting, with its own mythology of crimes and recurring characters.
This saga project consolidates Portabales as one of the most recognized voices in Galician and Spanish crime fiction, with one foot in the tradition of the genre and the other in the exploration of social issues such as memory, the weight of the past and gender inequalities in rural environments.
A creative process without a script and in two languages
Arantza Portabales' working method differs from more structured approaches. She herself explains that, behind "Murder at the Priest's Mill," There is no detailed script or classic outlineHe starts with the end, which is the point he has clearest in his mind, and from there he weaves the story until he reaches that conclusion.
The author jokes that her trained memory as opponent of the tax inspection It allows him to retain in his mind who killed whom and why, just as he was once able to memorize the VAT law by heart. This mental discipline allows him to handle complex plots without needing to rely on exhaustive outlines.
Furthermore, Portabales writes his novels in both Spanish as in Galician, a novel in two languages ​​and it doesn't translate itselfFor her, the story is the same, but each language gives the story a different feel, a particular nuance in the characters' voices and in the rhythm of the phrases that reinforces the authenticity of the Galician setting.
She would like to be able to bring this model to more languages, and confesses that she feels sadness at having lost the Basque language he spoke fluently before moving permanently to Galicia. Although he still understands it, he admits that he no longer has the same ease in expressing himself in that language, something that weighs on him personally and literarily.
A new stage in life: from the Xunta to making a living from writing
"Murder at the Priest's Mill" is also the first book Portabales has published. after requesting a leave of absence from her position as a civil servant of the Xunta de GaliciaUntil then, she served as deputy director general in an intervention area, a position with a lot of responsibility that coexisted with her literary side.
The decision to temporarily leave the administration was, for her, a necessary, even risky, step, but one she accepted as a privilege: to be able to make a living from writingHe understands literature, like public service, as an activity with a vocation to serve others, in this case through the stories he tells and the questions he poses to the reader.
This new professional stage coincides with the moment in which she herself feels safer from a technical and stylistic point of viewShe claims to be fully convinced that "Murder at the Priest's Mill" is her best crime novel to date, something she attributes to the maturity she has acquired book by book.
From that place of greater confidence, Portabales also reflects on How people react when life takes a turn for the worseHe argues that it is not only in bad times that you see who is by your side, but especially when someone is doing well and is truly happy; that is when, he says, the true dimension of love and real support appears.
With this new case in Loeiro, the writer reinforces a literary territory that mixes crime, memory and social criticism, and demonstrates that Some of the most intense and universal conflicts can be concentrated in a small coastal town.: guilt, silence, violence, and the difficulty of facing the past when it has been hidden for too many years.
