Calalobos, Luis Mario

«Cantabria enclosed in a raindrop. Luis Mario (we) falls from the sky», David Uclés · «One of those rare and extraordinary novels that contain a world», Layla Martínez · «A voice that overwhelms you and throws you into the sea», Anna Pacheco · «It clings to your body like a fine drizzle. By the time you realize it, you're completely soaked», Ángelo Néstore · «It points to Cantabria on the map and with a new but ancient language tells us: here poetry and brutality are born», Júlia Peró · «A kind of we messed up with a view of the bay». Conchita, Luis Mario's grandmother

In Cantabria, "calabobos" refers to a fine drizzle that falls imperceptibly, which is why it rains all the time in this novel and its characters are permanently wet. Surrounded by landscapes that are beautiful yet violent, and through a raw, uneducated oral tradition, and a coarse and fierce Cantabrian dialect, the protagonist of this story speaks of the silent brutality of a helpless town, which slowly seeps into its people without them even realizing it, as he tries to find his sister before high tide arrives.

Several years had to pass for Luis Mario to realize that he was living soaked, and once dry, he was able to write about the Bear Woman, the Fish Man, women who breastfeed dogs, men who gut cows, and cows that fall into the sea. About Mariuca and Nanda La Chona, infusions that kill everything, barnacles with enormous sex, sparrows that sprout from the earth, pods full of teeth, old women who feed on children, or a fetus inside a mussel. But, above all, he has written about a place that refuses to change. Calabobos represents the invention of a new mythological tale, beautiful and sharp as the rocks of a cliff.