About the book
In a dark and grey period, in the years after the Spanish war, an experienced investigator and his young companion fight to find the murderer of the Santa Cruz Mental Institute. On their way they discover the horrors of the institutions for the mentally ill during Franco’s regime. Decades later, a young librarian relives the story and the consequences of some events that reach into the present.
The historical data, as well as the psychiatric treatments described in the novel, are true. The characters are fictional.
Through the investigation of the two police officers – the veteran inspector Federico Aparicio and the rookie agent Arturo Muñoz -, While someone remembers us takes us back to the 40s, to a time of repression and abuse in which the Falangists and the religious seem to be the only ones who move freely. A time with the aroma of Ideales and carajillo, and with the soundtrack of Sighs of Spain o Tattooin which the two police officers try to get closer to the truth of the case, which begins with the murder of the nun:
«Between the white walls there were a dozen locked metal cabinets, stretchers and even an autopsy table, but it was much more welcoming than the dark and deserted galleries they had walked through. That is why it was so shocking to discover the corpse of a nun stretched out on one of the stretchers with a sharp object sticking out of her eye socket like a banderilla. The blood from the wound had covered the white habit in red.»
In parallel to the plot to discover Sister Natividad’s murderer, we follow the story of Irene Bertrán, a librarian’s assistant who takes refuge in literature to cope with her loneliness. Irene stumbles upon documentation from the Santa Cruz Mental Institute by chance and finds herself involved in the story to an extent she never suspected. The library where she works occupies one of the old pavilions of the center for mentally ill patients:
«When Irene left the library, it was already night. She crossed the Plaça Major in Nou Barris and, passing in front of the district headquarters, which occupied the main pavilion, she stopped and looked at the building outlined in the shadows. She looked at it as she had never done before, under a new prism, that of the history hidden behind its centuries-old walls.»
The novel combines fiction and real events to recount the atrocities committed during Franco’s regime in centres such as the Santa Cruz Mental Institute and to bear witness to the horror to which inmates were subjected. While someone remembers us It also denounces the use of mental institutions and the police to subdue dissidents and anyone who did not follow the moral standards of the time or who stood in the way of the Falangists and the powerful. A gripping story that makes us shudder with its setting, plot and portrayal of events and practices worthy of horror stories.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/mientras-alguien-nos-recuerda
