“A vibrant epic about the clamour of the Civil War,” Ignacio Martínez de Pisón.

Set in Madrid in the last days of the Civil War, and based on

little-known historical events, The Sand City relates the unsettling episodes that preceded the advance of Franco’s army into the capital in March 1939, seen through the experiences and feelings of characters of both sides. A woman, Isabel Mercadal, is torn between two soldiers who once fought for her love and now fight in the war: Tomás Broto, lieutenant

colonel in the Francoist army besieging the city; and Luis Masip, a captain in the republican army entangled in Colonel Casado’s conspiracy against Negrín’s government, which seeks the rendition of the republic. We also find Franciso Mercadal, Isabel’s brother, a young communist officer who confronts Casado’s rebellion in the streets of Madrid.

Apart from the four protagonists, we see an extraordinary

portrait of life in the trenches and besieged Madrid, with different characters torn between heroism and treason, duty and survival, loyalty to their ideals and indifference towards the outcome of the conflict.

In this novel rich in stories, not just in history, events and

characters coalesce into tales of suspense, adventure, love and war, in a military and political plot whose previously unknown details are revealed with the fast pace of a thriller.