Blood Beast (120 pages) is based on the figure of Manuel Blanco Romasanta, Spain’s first recorded serial killer, a travelling salesman who reputedly murdered mothers and their children while acting as a guide. He claimed to have been afflicted with lycanthropy, together with other humans, in the company of whom he killed and ate some of his victims. It was said he extracted the victims’ fat for use in making soap. When asked to demonstrate his transformation into a wolf, he replied that the curse had lasted thirteen years and had now expired. He was found guilty of nine murders in 1853 and sentenced to death by garrotte, but his sentence was commuted by Queen Isabella II of Spain in response to a letter from the French hypnotist Dr Phillips, who claimed to be able to treat lycanthropy by hypnosis. He later died in prison. As a child, he was originally thought to be a girl and was named Manuela. It was only later that people realized their mistake and reassigned his gender.

The novel is divided into short texts no more than two pages long, which are narrated by various voices in a range of registers. We are in the village of Regueiro, in the municipality of Esgos, rural Ourense, south-east Galicia, and Manuel Blanco Romasanta has just been born, his parents’ seventh child. To begin with, they think he is a girl. His mother, María, wonders what to call her and settles on the name Manuela. According to local legend, the seventh or ninth boy will be a wolf, and the seventh girl will be a peeira, one who rules over a flock of wolves. There are various beliefs about how you become a werewolf and the ways to avoid this. The child is baptized the day after her birth and immediately opens her eyes. The mother is surprised how the child already has teeth before she is even four months old and rejects her milk. The father, who used to be a drunk, wants to keep the child for himself. The child wakes at night and sleeps in the day. She has a little hair on her shoulders. When she sleeps, she makes animal noises. The father abandons the tavern in order to be with his child. It doesn’t matter that he’s seen her strangle chicks with her own bare hands and bite off their heads. That doesn’t matter. It’s just that the child is different.

As she grows up, she learns to write her name, to count, what eggs are worth, to make the beds and tidy the church. By the time she is six, she has hair on her thighs like a grown man. The neighbours shoo her away, they’re a little frightened of her and treat her like a pest. When she spits on the grass, the grass loses its colour and is burnt. The girl hides in a place that was once used for catching wolf cubs. Here she has black-and-red, noiseless dreams. She likes the colour red and has a remnant of cloth that colour which she rubs on her face, kisses and sleeps with. When she is eleven, she discovers her elder sister, Narda, at the river, washing blood-stained cloths. Narda explains how she will have a period every month and will have to stop the blood, something the men must never know about. Manuela asks if she will die as a result, and Narda laughs. By the time she is fourteen, however, Manuela still doesn’t have her period, nor has she grown breasts. She starts to imitate her brothers in their behaviour, to curse and smoke cigarettes. In the end, she puts on her brothers’ clothes. She feels betrayed by Narda, who didn’t tell her she would grow a little tail between her legs. Only when she sees her brothers peeing against the wall does she understand what it is. She starts to grow facial hair and realizes she will be a man on the outside, to her father’s great disappointment, but inside a woman will be fighting against a beast.

At the age of fifteen, her name is changed to Manuel. The father gives his daughter up for dead. His new son can go and live with the wolves, as far as he is concerned. He takes to drinking again. Manuel touches himself, even though he still feels like a woman inside and has certain feminine gestures. He senses the way a woman in church, Francisca, is going to have her period, as if he can smell her blood. Manuel marries Francisca, but only after insisting they get married on the day she has her period. Francisca cannot understand his obsession with her blood. Manuel does not get used to sharing a home with Francisca’s mother, who is suspicious of Manuel and is waiting for her daughter to get pregnant. Manuel avoids any conflict. In his dealings with people, he can be quite seductive. He prays the rosary on bare knees, as if he had a taste for pain. Outside, the animals procreate, but Francisca still does not get pregnant. Her mother wonders whether they should consult a specialist in a town on the other side of Ourense. The wolf is thought by humans to be a solitary creature, but actually it is a group animal that shares its kill. It enjoys tracking down its prey, leading it away from safety, setting a trap. Human paths criss-cross the paths used by wolves, leading east to Asturias and south to Portugal. Humans have left protective charms where the paths intersect to ward off evil. On the road leading to Chaves in Portugal, there is a chemist who sells normal things during the day, but also buys illicit things under cover of night. Manuel seeks something with which to treat the worm that gnaws him inside, the blackness he feels, the thirst and pain. He starts dealing in trinkets on either side of the Galician-Portuguese border.

In the village, Francisca thinks she is pregnant. She is afraid she might be carrying the offspring of wolves because she has heard Manuel say he has a wolf inside, but it turns out to be an illness of the intestines that swells her stomach and she dies while Manuel is on one of his trips. It is enough to be cursed three times to become a wolf, and Manuel has been cursed three times: once when he was born, another mouth to feed; once when hair came out of his body instead of blood and they discovered he was a boy; and a third time when he failed to get his wife pregnant. A witness declares before a judge that Manuel is not a bad man, just a little subdued. He was a great help around the house. It was like having a servant, a woman and a dog in a single body. The witness has heard he was hanging out with a woman called Manuela and her daughter. When Manuel returns to the village, he is thrown out of his mother-in-law’s house. He feels lost without Francisca. The terrible nightmares he had before have now returned. He would like to dig her up and tear off her shroud so he can see her again. He skins a rabbit. He hears it and smells it first. When the pain, thirst and hunger enter the part of him that is not human, there is nothing he can do to control them. He doesn’t recognize himself when the beast overcomes him. The forest that used to make him feel afraid now calls to him, he can smell all the little animals before he sees them, feel them under his feet. Manuel pays Manuela compliments; she laughs at him, but is drawn towards him like a boat to a quay. Manuela is very protective of her daughter, Petra, and keeps her close at all times. She is afraid for her daughter’s sake of all men that are not like Manuel.

Manuel has told Petra that Manuela has a job in Santander and has sent for her. He leads her up into the mountains, but they don’t seem to be going anywhere and Petra gets frightened. She has only agreed to accompany him because of Manuel’s friendship with her mother. Manuel seems to have done Petra some harm, it is because of the beast he carries inside. He undresses her slowly, tearing off the buttons of her clothes with his teeth. He then bites into her body and howls. He feels there are two or three wolves nearby calling to him, marking the territory, leaving signs, unsure whether he is a friend or a foe. Manuel is afraid if he shows any interest and lowers his head to drink from the puddles, they will jump on top of him. There is a legend about how the inhabitants of two villages, Cuqueixos and Pexeirós, grew tired of paying tribute to an evil woman, the Wolf Queen. They entered the castle that was her lair and chased her on to the rocks below. A woman tells how her grandfather burnt the skin of a peeira, a woman who rules over a flock of wolves, that turns out to have been her grandmother. A witness tells of two males wolves that have been hunting the local animals and fighting over a strange female (presumably Manuel himself). The witness believes if the men don’t get them first, the males will kill each other. Manuel reports how he and two other men turned into wolves and went hunting, and how the men followed after him, even though he wasn’t their leader. A voice describes how they feel the pain of others as if it was their own and get excited by it. That pain can be caused by the person tearing a body to pieces, biting and chewing, as if they were a wolf. The first body fell to the ground like a stone and was stillborn. The second body survived, and between them the mother and the newborn consumed the placenta. The mother’s milk started flowing, and the two of them were joined. As with fruit, the place where you hit a body tastes of rust, it is softer and more tender, even if you cry after eating it and the hunger returns. Manuel talks to Benita and explains how he was mounted by a male wolf, he is the she-wolf and gives milk.

Some villagers report how both Manuela and Benita, with their children, have relocated to Santander, where they have good work, and it was Manuel who guided them over the mountains. They sold everything they had because they were afraid of some Portuguese criminals who had reportedly been murdering young women and selling their fat for soap and they had no husband to protect them. Manuel wants to make love with Antonia out in the open, but she is reluctant because her young son is playing nearby and she tells him to wait. There is a letter from Manuela and Benita in Santander, thanking their lucky stars for the work that they have found and thanking Manuel, their benefactor. We can assume that the letter is forged and the women with their children have been killed. María is learning to write, so she can write a letter to Manuela and Benita saying she is well and Manuel is helping her. María writes an imaginary letter to her mother and sister in Santander saying how Manuel looks after her and is waiting for her to get her period so she can go and join the others in Santander. The girl has started having her period, but prefers not to tell Manuel, who has slept in the same bed as her and likes to smell her hair. Manuel wonders if someone will hear his confession and save his rotten soul. Some of the figures that scare people at night are she-wolves; others are just women who have run out of luck. A woman sees three men cooking human flesh in a pot in the mountains and races to the nearest town to report them. A witness claims that three women and their children have been murdered by Manuel, who goes by the name of Antón Gómez, and their fat has been sold for soap. He has been selling their clothes at the local market and using a knife that belonged to them to cut bread. The witness is sure it is him. Manuel prays to Francisca. He realizes men are out to look for him. He can hear their boots.

Manuel has been caught and taken to Verín to face trial. He is accused of murdering at least seven women and of selling their fat for soap. The judge asks Manuel to confirm that Antón Gómez is an alias, he is really Manuel Blanco Romasanta from Esgos in Allariz, he murdered a total of nine people because he was afflicted with lycanthropy, he did this in the company of other wolves and will show them where he committed the crimes and the remains of his victims. Manuel admits to murdering his victims in the company of two other men, also wolves, overwhelmed by hunger and strength, but they only ever murdered women and children, never grown men. The evidence of Dr Phillips, an eminent citizen of France, is presented to the court. He believes that Manuel could have been under a curse and powerless to prevent his actions or to remember them afterwards. He has used hypnosis to treat his patients and believes this could work with Manuel. Queen Isabella has asked for the death sentence to be reduced to one of life imprisonment so that Dr Phillips’s methods can be put to the test. The Queen, a crude figure, is astonished by the news that has reached her from Galicia of a murderous werewolf and extractor of fat. She is curious to know the whereabouts and names of the victims. In a letter to Dr Phillips, the writer claims not to need his services, the defendant himself has confessed to his crimes and admitted his guilt. He was a wolf for the twelve years during which he committed his crimes; the wolf occupies the whole of his story. A witness is shocked by the coldness with which Manuel relates his crimes. When he picked up the bone of one of his victims, his heart rate didn’t even alter.

Manuel is in prison. He has slept in worse places, but what gets him now is the loneliness he feels. He remembers back to when he was a child and people thought he was a girl – Manuela. The prison warders report how Manuel showed signs of fever and delirium during the night, throwing himself on the floor of his cell and wanting to tear off his clothes. He also cried out the names of women, which could have been those of his victims or relatives. Manuel recalls how he and the other two men would turn into wolves, commit their crimes and then return to where they had tossed aside their clothes, only for the other two men to realize he was the female wolf. There is an excerpt from the death sentence passed on Manuel Blanco Romasanta, which is then commuted to one of life imprisonment by order of Queen Isabella. There is a letter from a woman called Catalina, asking if he plans to return to her one day and occupy the left-hand side of her bed. Manuel admits that he had forgotten all about her. In prison, he feels the temptation to howl, but restrains himself. The other prisoners avoid him. The wolf has gone from inside him, but Manuela, the girl he once was, still wishes to come out. He dresses in women’s clothing and knits inside his cell. The other prisoners think he is pretending to be mad in order to secure his release. In the end, he bursts open, and a pool of blood collects on the floor of his cell. Manuel calls to his elder sister to tell her that his period has come at last.

Blood Beast is an interesting recreation of the story of a famous serial killer, Manuel Blanco Romasanta, the Werewolf of Allariz, who was thought to be a girl, but was later discovered to be a boy. He admits to committing horrendous crimes in the company of two other men who, when they were wolves, believed that Manuel was female and one of them mounted him. Manuel himself is waiting for the woman inside him to come out, which happens in his prison cell. This is the moment when he believes the period his elder sister, Narda, predicted has finally arrived. The novel is divided into texts of no more than two pages, in different registers and voices. Sometimes it is Manuel himself who is talking; others, it is one of his victims, or a witness. The book received the prestigious Xerais Prize for novels in 2018 and confirmed the author’s position as one of the most successful writers of her generation.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne