Barefoot Shadow (144 pages) is perhaps An Alfaya’s best-known young adult novel. It was first published in Galician in 2006, having won the previous year’s Lazarillo Award for Literary Creation, an award given by OEPLI, the Spanish section of IBBY, and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture.

Elsa lives in a household where the words ‘hunger’ and ‘war’ go together. Her grandfather, Xuliano Contreras, fought on the Republican side. For him, it was important to defend ideals. Her grandmother, Amadora, remembers the hunger they endured and so eats with predatory voraciousness. For Elsa, times are different. She can buy a new pair of shoes not only when they’re too tight or the leather has worn out, but to match a new outfit. Elsa understands there is a sense of guilt hanging over her grandmother’s sister, Sagrario, who while she was alive would turn up in the kitchen to eat the leftovers and who walked around the house barefoot, but she doesn’t know the reason for this guilt, only that the adults avoid giving her a direct answer. She is even more surprised when Sagrario dies and is dressed in the coffin in a pair of high heels with green velvet bows. Why dress in shoes a woman who used to walk about barefoot?

Fernando Contreras, Elsa’s father, had gone against his own father’s wishes in marrying Esperanza, who was from a family of Nationalists (either out of conviction or to avoid the miseries of hunger). Fernando’s father, Xuliano, blamed Esperanza for her family’s lack of ideals and wouldn’t speak to Fernando until Elsa was born. When Sagrario dies, Fernando insists she at least have some shoes on her feet, and his mother, Amadora, seems to soften, but still Elsa cannot understand what crime Sagrario is meant to have committed. Three women in the house are silent, carrying a sense of guilt: Sagrario walks barefoot because of some crime; Esperanza, Elsa’s mother, rarely opens her mouth because of the guilt ascribed to her Nationalist family; and Florinda, Elsa’s aunt, was forced to marry a man she did not love.

Fernando takes Elsa to the cemetery, where he reveals that Elsa’s grandparents’ anger directed towards Sagrario was because of the pain of those years of hunger and misery, which they unleashed on Sagrario. Everybody in the house hopes that this will enable them to forget past affronts and to get on with their lives, but when they return from the cemetery, Elsa demands that her grandparents, Xuliano and Amadora, explain the reason for their hatred. Xuliano begins to reveal the story. There was a night when people were taken from their houses by Nationalist soldiers and executed outside, Xuliano’s own father and brother among them. Sagrario had just turned twenty, and the very next day she turned up with some pretty velvet shoes on her feet, in stark contrast to the humility of the rest of her clothing. She had taken them from a village girl who had died. Xuliano ordered her to remove the shoes, and Sagrario herself dictated her own penance: to wander about the house like a barefoot shadow. She just wanted to look pretty, she so rarely received gifts, Florinda, Elsa’s aunt, intervened, and everybody thought the punishment had been too severe.

Amadora suggests that the house could do with airing. Everyone is assigned a task, but Elsa asks who is going to air Sagrario’s room. It seems, since that unfortunate incident, the room has remained shut with the shutters closed. Florinda says that she will do it. The mention of Sagrario’s name has affected Xuliano’s health, and he collapses in Fernando’s arms. Amadora is alarmed and sends for Dr Aneiros. Dr Aneiros reveals that Xuliano has a heart condition and must not become excited. There are things in the past that Amadora would like to have out with her husband, whom she loves despite everything, but she realizes now is not the time for that conversation, since it could have an adverse effect on his health.

Elsa is curious to get the key to Sagrario’s old room, since it still hasn’t been opened, but her parents fob her off. They don’t want to upset Xuliano further, given the state of his health. Amadora continues to look for an opportunity to ease her husband’s guilt, who is constantly demanding more blankets. She has always known his secret. At this point, Elsa enters the sick man’s room and asks for the key to Sagrario’s room, with the excuse that she might move her things there, now that she’s sixteen. Florinda, her aunt, appears in the doorway and says that she has the key. Florinda is married to a man twice her age, Bieito Nogueira, who owns the local wood factory. She is confined to their house, except when she visits her family. She is in the habit of receiving letters from Argentina – sent by a childhood friend, Isolinita Cruz, but really from her sweetheart, Rafael Xunqueira. One time a letter arrives, Florinda is out, and for the first time Bieito suspects their contents. No more letters arrive at the house.

Florinda claims she is the only one with the right to have the key to Sagrario’s room, she’s the only one who didn’t turn her back on her. Elsa, however, snatches the key from her, determined to find out what secrets are contained there. Florinda is upset – one of the secrets hidden in Sagrario’s room, inside the mattress, is her own, but she persuades herself that Elsa won’t rummage about that much. She doesn’t want Bieito to notice that she is upset, so she pretends it has to do with her father’s health. As Florinda is driven away by her husband, Elsa is free to go and investigate Sagrario’s room. The room is tidier than she had expected – perhaps Amadora had been in to clean the room after Sagrario’s death. Elsa is disappointed by what she finds – or doesn’t find – and is about to abandon the room when she decides to investigate a little further. She discovers brand-new pairs of shoes in the nightstands, the dressing table and the wardrobe, the fruit of an obsession, she thinks. And hidden under the soles of these shoes, quarto pieces of paper.

On the drive back to their house, Bieito and Florinda pass the postman, Avelino. Florinda thinks Avelino would like to signal something to her, she suspects there might be another letter waiting for her in the post office and finds it difficult to sleep that night. Elsa takes one of the pieces of paper and also discovers a ripped photograph showing a handsome young man and the arm and hand of a woman. Elsa wonders whether Sagrario had a boyfriend before she shut herself in her room. Her mother, Esperanza, comes in and reveals that the shoes were birthday presents from Fernando, who wanted to show his solidarity with his aunt by giving her shoes, which Sagrario would sometimes walk around her room in. Meanwhile, Bieito is suspicious of his wife’s restlessness and visits the post office, where he notices Avelino slipping a letter under the counter.

Esperanza sends Elsa to fetch Dr Aneiros, since Xuliano’s condition seems to have worsened, and also retrieves the key for Florinda. On the way to the surgery, Elsa takes out the photograph, which has an inscription on the back: ‘Always yours, X.’ Elsa wonders who the man could be. Bieito obtains the letter by threatening to get Avelino fired if he doesn’t hand it over. Elsa has read the letter she took from Sagrario’s room, which refers to a past that has now been lost and is signed ‘Rafael Xu…’ She thinks this must be the Rafael Xunqueira people have talked about in relation to Florinda and suspects Sagrario of acting as a go-between between the two of them. She thinks the ‘X.’ on the back of the photograph must also refer to Rafael Xunqueira, even though the age of the photograph meant the man must have been a bit old for Florinda.

Florinda goes looking for Elsa, but Elsa hasn’t got back from the surgery. Esperanza invites her into the kitchen, returns the key and serves her a bowl of broth. She explains that she and Fernando know about Florinda’s secret love and they don’t want her to have to move about like a shadow, as Sagrario did. Florinda is grateful for the confidence. Rafael Xunqueira’s letter is full of love and passion for Florinda. Elsa is almost envious and wonders whether anyone will love her with the same passion, and also whether sorrows lie in wait for her, just as they have accosted all the women in her family: Amadora, Sagrario, Florinda and Esperanza, who have been captured by circumstances and forced to behave in a certain way. Florinda, meanwhile, is distraught. She has ripped open Sagrario’s mattress, but can’t find the treasure (her secret correspondence with Rafael Xunqueira) she was expecting to find there.

Elsa hears Florinda’s sobs in the room and returns the letter she found to her. In a panic, Florinda asks where the other letters are. Elsa tells her not to worry, they are safe, and only she knows where they are hidden. Florinda is delighted to rediscover the letters and thinks Sagrario must have hidden them when she knew she was dying. She accuses Xuliano of sentencing Sagrario to living inside a niche and of selling Florinda to Bieito, and seems on the verge of spilling these secrets to Elsa, even if it means tarnishing Xuliano’s image. Florinda explains that Rafael Xunqueira is the love of her life. Conditions were tough in the village, so Rafael emigrated to Argentina, where he was going to establish himself and then send for Florinda. The months went by, and Florinda didn’t hear from him. Meanwhile, her father, Xuliano, got involved in some ill-advised business dealings. The family property was at risk. Bieito Nogueira stepped in, saving the family property in return for the hand of Xuliano’s daughter, Florinda. Only later did Florinda find out, through her friend Isolinita, that Rafael had fallen ill when he arrived in Argentina and been unable to write to her. Now she was married, Rafael was single, they resolved to wait until Bieito should die so they could be together and continued corresponding with the help of Isolinita and Avelino.

Elsa decides to hand over the photograph as well, thinking it was a photograph of Rafael Xunqueira. Florinda asks what a photograph of her father, Xuliano, was doing in Sagrario’s shoes. They both come to the conclusion there was something going on between Xuliano and his sister-in-law, Sagrario. Florinda returns home, where Bieito is waiting for her. He tells her to leave the way she came – with an empty suitcase and a letter – and that her father’s debt has been paid. He also says she may find something interesting in the latest letter. Florinda returns to her family home and tells Esperanza she has come to stay. She then reads the letter, which informs her of the death of Rafael Xunqueira in Argentina.

Elsa overhears her grandmother, Amadora, confessing to Xuliano, who seems to have died already, that she knew all about his love affair with her sister. When Amadora was out, earning a living, Sagrario was at home, looking after the children. It was Amadora who had taken the shoes from the dead village girl and given them to Sagrario – in order to make Xuliano’s love for her grow cold. Elsa is shocked by what she hears and turns to find Florinda wandering down the corridor in the same clothes Sagrario used to wear, another barefoot shadow.

This is a seamless narrative in thirty-one short chapters about the long-term effects of the Spanish Civil War and the confrontation between Republicans and Nationalists, and also about a family’s secrets, which have been suppressed and allowed to fester. In particular, the women in the family – Amadora, Sagrario, Florinda and Esperanza – have lived with guilt in the shadow of their men. It is only Elsa’s determination not to suffer the same fate that has led to the secrets being revealed. Barefoot Shadow merited the Lazarillo Prize for Literary Creation. It was also included in the White Ravens Catalogue and the IBBY Honour List, international indicators of quality.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne