Sins, corruption and the magic of the stonemasons: the secrets of the Lonja de Valencia

ValenciaIn the heart of Valencia's historic center, facing the Central Market and very close to the church of Santa Caterina, stands a Gothic building that puzzles the visitor. One might think it is a temple, but in reality it is the Merchants' Exchange. At the entrance, satirical and obscene figures abound, such as men and women touching their genitals and birds spicing butts. At the exit door, on the other hand, everything is harmony. The writer Juan Francisco Ferrándiz (Cocentaina, 1971) is so fascinated by this Gothic building that it inspired him to write a book about its construction in the late 15th century: La Llotja de la seda (Silk Exchange) (Rosa dels Vents / Grijalbo), which Josep Alemany and Imma Falcó have translated into Catalan.

As he walks through the hall of endless columns, the author of El judici de l'aigua (The Judgment of the Water) (2021) and L'hereva del mar (The Sea Heiress) (2024) explains why he chose it to write a book about. He sees the imposing building, built so that merchants could do business there, "as a purgatory". "The harmony of the Exchange has always surprised me. You feel that there is a will for it to resemble a church, to have that mystical quality. Who knows if they were inspired by Ramon de Perellós's Viatge al purgatori, (Journey to Purgatory) [from the late 14th century], which describes a hall of columns similar to it. The Exchange could be this transitional space where the merchant purifies himself from the sin of usury," explains Ferrándiz.

The novelist also argues that the builders took as a model the House of the Forest of Lebanon that King Solomon had built near the Temple of Jerusalem. In short, for the author, the Exchange is the monument to the change of mentality in the 15th century: the idea that effort and talent allow for prosperity, that making money is not sinful, and that destiny should not be determined by family or place of birth.

In one of the rooms, the writer stops in front of one of the "reddish" stones brought from Mallorca: it is the key to a real case of corruption that Ferrándiz collects in the novel. "Due to an exorbitant price, someone asked: 'What is happening here?'. They started to investigate and found inflated invoices and accounting manipulation. It is a historic corruption case starring Pere Sancruïlla. It seems that corruption has been part of our Valencian idiosyncrasy forever", comments the author ironically. The building has lived a thousand lives: from a silk trade center to a military barracks, a numismatic market and the setting for the civil burial of Blasco Ibáñez. Today it still stands as a reminder of the work done by the Valencian stonemasons to build a building declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996.

An accused of witchcraft and a devout woman

The stonemasons and everything that it involved in raising a temple for men's activities and not to worship God are part of the plot of the Valencian novelist and lawyer. Through real characters, such as Joan Ibarra and Pere Compte, who were the builders of the Llotja, and others of fiction such as Francesca, Ferrándiz explains the construction of the building. Although Pere Comte is the most recognized name, the story reveals other figures such as Francesc Baldomar, the ideologue of the building, and who, according to Ferrándiz, endowed Valencian architecture with a unique symbolism. The novelist is fascinated by Ibarra because he was unknown and, even so, they placed him on the same level as Compte. "Ibarra must have possessed a skill that made him indispensable for a work of such magnitude," he says.

The protagonist women are indeed the product of the author's imagination. Francesca, Iborra's wife, is persecuted and accused of witchcraft. "We Valencians are influenced by Moorish magic. I wanted to show this ancestral wisdom of Valencian women, who know prayers and rituals that have lasted for centuries. Even today, in 2026, there are gatherings where women exchange prayers and mix Christianity with much older roots," explains Ferrándiz. The other woman, Lucrecia, embodies immobile and prejudiced nobility. Lucrecia also represents bigotry taken to the extreme. On a walk through the novel's settings, the author stops at Santa Caterina church, where in the Middle Ages there were women who voluntarily walled themselves up. "Right by the wall, they had an addition built and shut themselves in, with practically no space to move. They were given food through a hole and had a small window to follow the masses, and they died there," he explains.