The Red Gate

A novel about growing up, remembering, and deciding who we are when the versions of our past no longer fit. A story about people who search, through fragments, for a way to tell themselves their own story. 

Begoña arrives in Madrid to begin a new life: a university degree, a shared apartment, and the promise of a freedom yet to be lived. But the past does not stay behind so easily. The ghost of her deceased mother visits her often, her grandmothers keep a heavy silence about the family history, and her own body—marked by anxiety, desire, and fear—prevents her from putting down roots. 

When, by chance, s she becomes fixated on a historical figure from Spain’s recent past: “El Lute,” a legendary outlaw whose story she encounters almost by accident. She decides to propose his story for a theatre production at the Complutense. What begins as curiosity turns into obsession. Before long, what seemed like someone else’s biography becomes entangled with the gaps in her own genealogy: the figure of her mother, the shadow of her grandfather, the Spanish Transition, and collective memory converge in a single narrative, revealing just how deeply silences and wounds are inherited. 

A coming-of-age novel haunted by ghosts—personal, political, and emotional—where learning to live means learning how to listen.