The unyielding strength of righteousness and goodness

More than a story that unfolds, it evolves and takes shape as events occur, situations accumulate, and the plot progresses, Who saves a lifeNúria Cadenes's work is like a darkened altarpiece that is gradually illuminated by non-consecutive panels. The structural choices made by the author—short chapters, a disordered chronology, and a tendency toward synthetic and elliptical expression—give the work more the feel of a complicated and elusive puzzle than an easily understandable story or narrative.

Given that the narrative, human, sociopolitical, and historical materials used in the novel are very common in a certain type of commercially driven narrative—the Spanish Civil War, family intrigues with a soap opera feel, World War II, Nazis, border crossings, an unlikely hero—it is not entirely out of the question to explicitly rule out the most stereotypical formulas. best-selling authorsWhile writers of this type of book take care to ensure their readers stay on track, Cadenas doesn't mind, and at times even seeks out, the reader feeling disoriented, bewildered, and lost. This doesn't prevent her from offering points of reference, including purely informative phrases that reorient and guide the reader, but one of the author's objectives is to structurally recreate or evoke the confusion, uncertainty, and fragility of the era she portrays. And she succeeds.

To risk one's life

The protagonist of Who saves a lifeThe unlikely hero at the center of the altarpiece is Father Joan, a man of insignificant appearance—"short," discreet, "clouded eyes"—who, behind his facade of a humble village priest, hides a religious figure with a theological education of European caliber, which is very unsettling for the Franco regime. Even more defining, though, is his ethical character: he is a champion of kindness. The phrase from the Mixna Where Cadenes takes the title of his book – "whoever saves one life, saves the whole world" – already establishes the ethical coordinates around which Father Juan moves, who risks his life to save a multitude of entire worlds.

Around Father Juan and his parish, an escape network is formed, comprised of men and women with diverse personalities, life stories, and ideologies (there are religious figures, but also communists and anarchists). This network helps all kinds of fugitives from fascism cross the border from the Cerdanya region. These are years—the first five years of the 1940s—when the Cerdanya was caught between two fires: Francoist Spain and Nazi-occupied France, via the swastika or the Vichy regime. The risk, therefore, was enormous, and the novel makes no secret of its status as a moving tribute: what is recounted, as the author explains in the afterword, is based on real people and events.

One of the novel's main strengths is Cadenas's ability to portray Father Juan in all his complexity: without ethical or moral ambiguity, because he had none, but also without presenting him in any hagiographic light. When telling stories like this, there is a danger of presenting solidarity and kindness as weak and sentimental virtues. Cadenas is aware that, in times of cruelty and injustice, righteousness, kindness, and solidarity require unwavering strength and immense resolve.