Ébora (464 pages), first published by Edicións Xerais in the year 2000, is the fifth and last in a series of novels that includes The Misfortune of Solitude, A Game of Apocrypha, Melancholia Perhaps and The Centuries of the Moon. Divided into twenty-five chapters, it is widely regarded as one of the author’s finest works.

Libardino Romero, native of the town of Ébora, has taken two important decisions in his life. The first was to get married twenty years earlier to his wife, Matilde, a decision he now regrets. The second is to leave his wife and set out on an adventure, like Odysseus in search of Ithaca and Penelope. He works as an administrative assistant in an office, takes solace in books and films, but decides this is not enough and packs a bag with 10,000 pesetas, some underwear and his photo of the actress Margarita Vega, which has kept the flame of his passion alive all these years. He sets out from his house, bids farewell to the butcher who has bothered him in his first-floor apartment with the noise of his knives, cleavers, and the hum of his fridge, and heads to the main square. He is uncertain which direction to take and decides to follow the twenty-seventh car to pass in front of him, but is momentarily distracted by a man sitting on a red suitcase in the middle of the square, who claims to be Mephistopheles’s son and to dream everything into existence. He gives him the 10,000 pesetas so he will dream Libardino as an adventurer and heads back to the crossroads.

Libardino’s mother, Señorita Pura, had been born in 1909 after her mother had been cured of syphilis by Paul Ehrlich himself. At the age of forty, she gave birth to Libardino, who weighed almost seven kilos, despite being born at only five months (an excess of soul, said an Andalusian doctor). The local gossips wondered who the father could be and, since Libardino had plenty of blond hair, suspected it was the parish priest, Don Blas, so one Sunday, after High Mass, Señorita Pura paused outside the church and announced to all and sundry that the father had been a bullfighter by the name of Tomás Romero who had wooed her with mellifluous words, married her, they had spent one night together before he had been gored and killed by a bull in Seville. The priest increases the number of daily Masses in Ébora to six and includes talk about all kinds of subjects in his sermons after one night the statue of St Benedict in his church comes to life, telling him to take the rose in his hands and talk to his parishioners of culture.

Libardino remembers the night before, when his wife accused him of not having cleaned her portrait properly (he is expected to clean the house from top to bottom on every weekday), but it was his flatulence, which he normally tries to hide, that caused her to open the windows of their apartment and shout that she was living with a pig. Libardino decides to stop off at his office to say goodbye to all his co-workers, including Sacarino, who is the office boy and enjoys Libardino’s stories (Libardino says he is going to set up a House of Sexual Health and will appoint Sacarino as the manager, just as soon as he receives the inheritance of an uncle who lived in Macondo). He then meets the deputy director, a childhood friend who used to build tree houses and then rent them out to young couples looking for a little intimacy out of town (he would spy on them through a crack in the floor, but only for twenty seconds in order to limit the damage to his moral health). He tells him he is a spy, and that is why he is leaving.

The schoolteacher, Saladina Ferrer, who was forced to flee from Ébora by Franco’s army because she was a Republican, returns to the town to help the priest, Don Blas, with his mission to install culture in the local inhabitants and teach them to read. Despite the age difference, the schoolteacher, almost sixty, falls in love with the young priest. Meanwhile, one of the men who go to the Fountain of Enchantment to engage in conversation, Tintoreto, drinker of red wine and painter of coffins, is in love with Libardino’s mother, Señorita Pura. He has painted coffins for one of Franco’s generals who was afraid of the dark, so he introduced a light bulb in the coffin that would supposedly light once the earth fell on top of it, and for an emigrant to Cuba, beautiful pictures of mulatto women, but the emigrant returned to Cuba and the coffin ended up being used as a trough. Saladina catches Señorita Pura naked in the vestry and hears the priest running away, but it is not what she thinks. They ask her to sit on the font and inform her that Señorita Pura has the ability to levitate, but you can’t do this with your clothes on.

Libardino hands his remaining possessions – some underwear and a piece of cardboard with his earwax on it – to a woman in the street, who screams out loud and is assisted by a policeman. The policeman suspects the earwax is hashish and sets off in pursuit of Libardino, who manages to escape and meets a one-armed dancer, Susanito Cabral, who fell in love with a prostitute, Laura, in a nightclub in Zamora and danced the tango with her, they then went to a cheap hotel to spend the night in order to flee the next day, but her pimp had followed them in the car and beat Susanito up, depriving him of the use of his left arm. They go to a nightclub, where they meet a prostitute who is learning English so she can triumph in Hollywood, but are unable to pay for their drinks. A stray dog they have met along the way comes to their defence, and they manage to escape, seeking refuge in two bottles of 100 Pipers whisky and a cave in the mountainside, where Libardino feels sad at Susanito’s confession that he doesn’t have long to live.

Some itinerant sellers arrive in Ébora and promise to help Tintoreto conquer his love. On their travels, they met a young poet who wanted to commit suicide because the woman he loved was going to marry somebody else, the sellers gave him a magical perfume, he went to the church, where the bride abandoned her husband-to-be in the aisle and threw herself into the poet’s arms. Meanwhile, in the cave, the dog arrives with a newspaper in its mouth. Libardino and Susanito read that the writer and intellectual Xesús Dorrego Fernández has died, leaving behind a dog that knows how to read. This is the stray dog that they have found, which turns out to be called Suceso (Accident and Crime). Susanito then suffers what appears to be an attack of epilepsy, but he recovers and determines to set out in search of his beloved, Laura, for which they will need a vehicle, so they steal a van from a man who is grafting his trees. Libardino’s wife, Matilde, is in a bar, gossiping and playing cards with her friends. She informs the police inspector Aurelio Arias that Libardino has made off, having stolen three million pesetas from her mother. She wants the policeman to locate Libardino and bring him back, so he can be her slave again.

Back in Ébora, the priest, Don Blas, has tried and failed to explain the concept of the Trinity (three in one) to his congregation. He visits the schoolteacher, who has long been awaiting a declaration of love from the priest, and asks her if she understands what he means by “three in one”. She says she does, and the priest is so overjoyed he kisses her all over and skips off to his parish to babble away in front of the wooden statue of St Benedict. Saladina herself is so hypnotized by the experience, believing herself to be loved, that she never regains consciousness and remains in the house of Tintoreto, and Libardino, who has climbed a tree, refuses to come down until the itinerant sellers, the brother and sister Policarpo and Ernestina Montoya, produce a cinematograph and a white sheet and proceed to project the film Gilda.

In search of Laura, Susanito and Libardino arrive at a nightclub called Lasirene, which they assume to mean “The Siren” in French. They meet the owner, who offers them a drink and explains that the club is actually named after his wife, Irene, and his cat, Lasi. This is not a normal nightclub, here the women spend as much time as they like with the clients, endeavour to listen and soothe their troubled spirits, receive as much money as they like and give the owner just enough so that he can continue to live and write novels. Libardino thinks this will be an excellent place for Sacarino to come and work and gives him a call. Meanwhile, they meet the pianist, Leopoldo, who used to teach music at school. In Ébora, the mayor buys a new television set. His father, Priorato, cannot believe that small humans can exist inside the set and doesn’t understand what they are talking about when they mention Communists and Masons. He starts to dance when two dancers appear on the screen, but the effort is too much for him and he dies. The family and neighbours are afraid that the television has had a pernicious effect on him and ask the priest to come and exorcize it. It is then the mayor’s wife, Hortensia, who pays attention to the television and starts to talk to it. She won’t go to bed until Franco has appeared on the screen to say goodnight. When the sound stops working for fifteen days, she thinks it is because the television presenters don’t have enough to eat and starts preparing bowls and bowls of food for them, omelettes, broths, stews, which her husband has to surreptitiously throw away because there’s too much food for them to eat, until one day Tintoreto comes up with the idea of sending a letter from the workers to say that they now have enough to eat and there is no need to prepare any more food for them. Tintoreto takes the perfume the itinerant sellers give him, but the first woman he meets is not Señorita Pura, it is the shopkeeper, Romana, who falls irremediably in love with him.

In Lasirene, the pianist, Leopoldo, explains how he lost his job. There was a concert with pupils he had prepared, and pupils prepared by another teacher, including the local MP’s son. When his son had produced an awful interpretation of a piece by Manuel de Falla, the local MP asked the compère to invite his son to play the piece again, and everybody clapped. But when the MP asked Leopoldo his opinion of his son’s interpretation, Leopoldo replied he thought two slaps across the face should be enough to correct him. Libardino and Susanito then set out again in search of Laura, but are arrested by the police for stealing three million pesetas, a vehicle and two bottles of whisky. They are saved again by the dog, which attacks the policemen. They then fill up the van with petrol and avoid having to pay thanks to the dog. In Ébora, the priest, Don Blas, pulls Romana off Tintoreto and tells her to leave him alone. He is still talking about the Trinity, and Tintoreto suggests he should go to see the new doctor, Dr González, who will be able to help him. Dr González decides he is suffering from some kind of pathology, but the priest invites the doctor to be the new schoolteacher and she starts teaching the children right away. Meanwhile, Tintoreto, who can make any woman in Ébora fall in love with him thanks to the itinerant sellers’ perfume, is unable to locate Señorita Pura anywhere (though it does occur to him to make all the women in Ébora fall in love with him). Three children – Libardino; Romana’s son, Milín, later deputy director of the firm where Libardino works; and the mayor’s son – smoke joints in their tree house and spy on a couple making love, each for their allotted time of twenty seconds. The mayor’s son then confesses his love for Dr González and won’t stop crying.

Twenty years later, and the mayor’s son has become a striptease artist. He had always wanted to have a secretary, to appear on television and to play golf on a Sunday, and this was his way of achieving this. Libardino and Susanito arrive, looking for Laura, Libardino recognizes the mayor’s son and tries to attract his attention, but the enthusiastic women watching his show object to Libardino’s presence, accuse him of being homosexual and try to push him away, at which point Suceso the dog comes to the rescue, and they kidnap the mayor’s son, who is slow to recognize Libardino, but, when he does, is overjoyed to see him again after so much time. They then break into a shop in order to steal some clothes for the mayor’s son, who is only wearing some skimpy briefs. They then stop at a roadside café in order to have breakfast and attempt to get away without paying, but the waitress on duty pulls out a shotgun and threatens to report them to the police until they reveal that they are from Ébora, and it turns out the waitress is the daughter of the general who was reported to have been buried in a coffin with light. She lets them go. In Ébora, Xaquina has a son, Guantanamera, who sings boleros all day long. The father was a poet who came to town and seduced her with his verses, but, as soon as he found out she was pregnant, disappeared. From that moment on, Xaquina resolves to become eternal so she can annihilate all the writers in the world. She goes to see the Montoyas, who claim to be 300 years old, but they reveal their secret to her and she has to abandon her wish to be eternal. The people of Ébora resolve to bring the sea to Ébora. They excavate a valley, fill it up with water, which they salinate, having studied the composition of tears, and then they use a ventilator to create waves.

The police inspector, Aurelio Arias, is on the trail of the three delinquents: Libardino, Susanito and the dog. He decides to see if he can find Gaspar, the pimp who deprived Susanito of his arm. He knows he likes knives. He goes to a shop that sells knives, where the shop assistant, María Rosa, knows who he is talking about and takes him to a bar that Gaspar likes to visit. Meanwhile, the two get talking, María Rosa tells Aurelio about her father, Abelardo, an administrative assistant, like Libardino, who liked to do nothing, to watch the world go by, smoking cigars. Aurelio feels that he is beginning to fall in love with this woman. Susanito suffers another attack of epilepsy. They bump into María Rosa, who doesn’t think Aurelio will really arrest them, he actually wants to leave the police force and become a history teacher. On the road, they come across Mephistopheles’s son, who joins them in the van. They are almost arrested by the Civil Guard, but claim to be patriots who fought in the Gulf War and are on a spying mission, and the Civil Guard let them go.

In Ébora, the painter of coffins, Tintoreto, has nowhere else to go and ends up in the church, talking to the statue of St Benedict. At one moment, he takes off his clothes, removes the statue from its niche, places it on a pew and gets into the niche himself. When the priest arrives, he believes that the statue of St Benedict has come to life, his thoughts about the Trinity have been vindicated, he rushes out to tell the women, who are amazed, but then they realize it is actually Tintoreto, who has fallen asleep. Tintoreto pretends to be mad; a secret understanding is established between him and Señorita Pura.

Libardino sees a billboard by the road, announcing a performance by Margarita Vega. He wants to go, but the fugitives don’t have enough money or petrol. They return to the petrol station they visited previously, steal the owner’s sumptuous Mercedes and also his safe from behind a painting, which they open with the help of a strange trio they bump into: Juanito, a geography and history teacher; Ferro, who is unemployed; and Pitagol, an unsuccessful writer. In Ébora, it is June 1977, and some politicians turn up to ask for their votes, but the people of Ébora say they have no need of political parties, they have their mayor and everything is OK. Tintoreto finally confesses his love for Señorita Pura, and the two of them discuss invented words and films that they have seen. Dr González has given up teaching children because there are no children left in Ébora, they have all gone off to the city to look for work, so she devotes her time to reading. Libardino and the mayor’s son go off to buy some expensive clothes, while the others play Tute. They head out to a luxurious seafood restaurant and then to the cabaret where Margarita Vega will be performing that night. Libardino manages to convince the manager to let him interview the artist, he arrives in her dressing room with a bunch of roses and proceeds to tell her a series of lies, such as that he directs a magazine called Gilda, is a rich businessman, a marquis married to a countess. She sees through his lies, so Libardino proceeds to tell her the truth about his painful marriage to Matilde, she says at least he had something to fight against. She says goodbye, her husband is waiting at the hotel, and Libardino returns to his friends.

In Ébora, the mayor has a lift installed in the town hall so that animals can attend town hall meetings. Meanwhile, another inhabitant, Toñicas, has a progressive disease that makes all the fingers on his right hand wither away except for the middle finger, so that when he raises his hand, people think he is being offensive. He uses this fact to insult those he doesn’t like, carrying with him a doctor’s certificate to prove that the condition of his hand is irreversible. Gaspar turns up outside the hotel where Libardino and his friends are staying. They send Mephistopheles’s son to get the dog, Suceso, from the Mercedes, but he is intercepted by the petrol station owner in the company of two hired thugs, who threaten him with weapons. They are all arrested by the police inspector, Aurelio Arias, it turns out the two thugs are wanted men. Meanwhile, Susanito spots Laura getting into Gaspar’s car. She doesn’t even remember his name, she is in a relationship with Gaspar and has no intention of returning his love. Susanito is so overcome that he suffers another attack and dies in hospital, where Mephistopheles’s son, having discussed Rita Hayworth with the police inspector and advised him to abandon the police force and become a teacher, joins them.

In Ébora, Tintoreto and Señorita Pura continue in love; the mayor marries Xaquina. The inhabitants of the town agree to take part in a game show in Madrid, which they understand will provide them with the necessary funds to undertake reconstruction work in their town, but they feel deceived, disappointed, the game show doesn’t depict them as they would like. At a meeting, Tintoreto proposes destroying all the television sets in Ébora, they don’t need them after all, but Dr González stands up in defence of freedom and the right of each individual to choose, while Señorita Pura claims that Ébora is an island in the midst of the absurdity that surrounds them. In the final chapter, Libardino, the mayor’s son and Mephistopheles’s son arrive in Ébora, where Mephistopheles’s son praises their determination to stand up against the tide of stupidity, and the mayor’s son confesses his love for the doctor, who loves him in return. Libardino sets out again in search of new adventures, and Mephistopheles’s son opens his red suitcase to find the plan of a novel, Ébora, twenty-four chapters, in imitation of The Odyssey perhaps, and one final chapter.

This novel is rich in its wide variety of characters, in the thoughts and conversations that they share, in the wealth of literary references. Ébora is a world apart, where what would not normally be possible becomes possible, where the people hold out in defence of their way of life and against the tide of stupidity that is represented by television (though some argue that it has its place, and no one wants to prohibit anything). In their different ways, the characters struggle to fulfil their destiny, to live the kind of life that they would like to lead, and, once they achieve their wish, they abandon the semblance of madness. The novel was awarded Galicia’s main prize for a long novel, the Blanco Amor, and also the Eixo Atlántico, open to writers and artists on either side of the border of Galicia with Portugal.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne