MATÈRIA DE VALÈNCIA. SURPRISING FACTS AND CHARACTERS FROM OUR HISTORY.
Did you know that Adolf Hitler had Valencian slaves during the Second World War? Or that a woman from Alzira, Ginesa, was the lover of King James I and that they fathered an illegitimate child? Or that the Falles de València were held in the city of Tarragona in the 1930s? And why does a rat penat represent us, the Valencians? Who was the invincible pilot and pardoner, Xiquet de Simat, who had a life like a film? Or what punishment did Franco's regime apply to the women who were repressed in the post-war period?
All these facts and characters, who in their own way have forged the country of the Valencians, can be found in Matèria de València, from the suggestive view of the well-known researcher and disseminator Vicent Baydal, together with many other surprising stories.
For example, that of the Castilian from Toledo who wrote the Curial e Güelfa, one of the peaks of Valencian medieval literature; that of the besnet of Pope Borja, governor of Orà, who was the first to be persecuted for homosexuality by the Inquisition; that of two Alacantins who were fundamental in the independence of the United States of America; that of Blasco Ibáñez as a disenchanted populist revolutionary or that of the strong women of our literature, such as Maria Beneyto and Carmelina Sánchez-Cutillas. A delirious journey through the historical material of which we are made.