Ocho años de silencio

Once upon a time, in a remote village in the south of Spain, there was a white town called Arquía de la Millación. There lived: the teacher, in love with an out-of-reach movie star; Conchita, a prostitute who wanted to be a mother; Don Adolfo, who invented a better past for his son; Monica Portugal, the singer fascinated with her voice… Eight Years of Silence narrates a story that starts at the beginning of the Spanish civil war in 1936, when the Francoist forces enter Arquía de la Millación, a little village in the south of Spain. The Arquiense —who are the only village in all of Spain that, in the recent election, has not cast one single vote in favour of Franco— receives the army with white sheets spread out, in a sign of surrender, but remain firm as a group and refuse to denounce their neighbours. The mayor has disappeared and the very diverse families that make-up the village support one another in order to keep a dignified stance in present conditions. Corporal Martín Pareja Nájera, in charge of the patrol and fervent admirer of Mónica Portugal, a near-by neighbour of the village and famous singer of the period, decides not to execute them so as not to offend his admirer. However, he decides to deprive them of any possibility of having descendants; and takes away the children to re-educate them in Francoist centres and forbids the Arquienses from ever conceiving again. Soon thereafter, a Corrigidor (Chief Magistrate) arrives to keep an eye on them and make sure the punishment is carried out accordingly. Without children, the town falls into a total silence. After eight years of resignation, an unexpected discovery —a wild little girl in a near-by forest— instils in the Arquienses the will to continue living. The girl's education will be taken-up, in rotation, by all the families in the village, including the prostitute (in hiding from the Corrigidor), and this will be the chief motive and reason for their hope of escaping a destiny that has been fatally marked, giving them the chance of reassessing their future.