An epic novel and everyday life starring Asturian Warriors women who fought in the seventh century during the reconquest, at the time of Don Pelayo, has won the Historical Narrative Prize of Edhasa in his eighth edition. The North Song, Subtitled “La Guerrera Astur”, by Pilar Sánchez Vicente, is the winning work of this award for gender literature, endowed with 10,000 euros and a statuette, which in this case is also of female gender. The novel narrates retrospectively, told by one of its sisters with the dying protagonist, the adventures and feats of Sancha Asuera, the Astur warrior known as the Valentone, who has given rise to a song of a deed on his exploits (the northern singing of the title), including the reconquest of Cangas to the Saracens for Christianity.
Sanchez Vicente (Gijón, 63 years old), who has collected the award in Barcelona, is a historian, documentary and writer with 12 novels published, including several historical genre and other police. The jury stressed that it is a work “pleasant and exciting about warrior women who in the shadow of the mythical figure of King Pelayo fought and won battles.” And he added that the novel is “faithfully documented and agilely written” and that “transports the reader to the Asturian lands of the middle of the seventh century.”
In a morning “Asturiana, Calabobos included”, as the editor of Edhasa, Daniel Fernández, Sánchez Vicente has pointed out, stressed that beyond the battles, The North Song It is a novel of characters and with great attention to everyday life, such as markets. He has also stressed that Sancha Asuera is a historical character that we know thanks to the Memories of Asturiasfrom the 16th -century Avilesino cleric Luis de Valdés, which, he recalled, explained how Don Pelayo was from Covadonga to Cangas de Onís, in the hands of the Muslims, and the warrior women of his troop disguised themselves as Mooring Slaves escaped and thus managed to enter the city “killing as lions and as Asturian brave, with their captain Sancha.” The warrior herself went out to receive Pelayo with the keys of the city in a source “and presented them to the king with great horror and admiration of the entire army.” The novel recreates in a very exciting way the episode of the ruse of Sancha, the taking of the city and the reception to Pelayo, with the imposing warrior under his bear skin.
Daniel Fernández recalled that not many years ago he refused that there could be women warrior in history-Sergio Vila-Sanjuan, a jury member, has nuanced with humor that we always had Sigrid de Thule-, but that in recent times the existence of warriors between peoples such as the Scites and the Vikings has been confirmed, in addition to gladiator women, and novels and series have been populated. He stressed that Sánchez Vicente gives a letter of nature and visibility now to the medieval Asturian warriors and does so with enormous realism and emotion.
“Finding that mention of Sancha Asuera and the warriors of Pelayo in the Memoirs of De Valdés was a gift,” explained the author, who recalled that the cleric states that the women combatants demanded to collect a soldience as their comrades men. “I have tried to get inside and describe that world as it could have been,” he continued with a passion that made her transfigurate into a bold and that shouted to give her a sword to embody the Sancha Asuera that shows very effectively the cover of the book, about to release a mandoble.
The novelist, whose thesis was about the woman in the Middle Ages, wanted, has immersed themselves in the magma from which the Women Guerreras Astures came out and in that mixture of history and legend that configures the reign of Pelayo and the battle of Covadonga. “I like border places and times,” said Sánchez Vicente, who recalled that his novels always have female protagonists like Sancha and their captains.