Let’s imagine it how it was: a dusty plain scattered with dwarf oak trees. Nothing else for thousands of years, but then, suddenly, men arrive and begin to act as they always do: they hunt, they invent gods, they sing, they wage wars, they tell stories, they love, they kill, they dance, they are born, they die… During centuries they mill around building and destroying a city that will eventually come to be known as Salamanca.

Among all the men and women that have trodden the streets of this city, some will be remembered. Some of them have taken part in stories that are worth retelling. Legends, Miracles, and Extraordinary Rumours of the City of Salamanca offers you a glimpse of some of them so that while you wander the city streets, whether as a local or a visitor, you will be able to listen to their echoes and make out the shadows of who they once were.

Within these pages, you will come across vengeful kings and dukes, an African nun, bad temprered and kind hearted saints, Carthaginians on elephants, aristocratic warlocks and humble alchemists, rependant heretics, Jews that are born from a dream, a mocking shoemaker, rogues, students both good and bad, greedy sacristans, a warrior bishop, a vengeful mother and a murdering marchioness, a one-eyed washerwoman, a false doctor, an enchanted moor, a co-habiting bishop, a stone frog, a blind organist, a Trojan captain, a levitating saint… and many more. All of them, men and women, partly remembered and partly invented, but almost without exception, forming the fabric of our dreams.

(Traducción: Mark Anderson).