-Through a long, shocking and meticulous confession, which she calls "the chronicle of a landslide", Matilde Verdú, the protagonist of La cruz de San Andrés, tells us a punctual account of her life. Sex, frustration, madness and death are intimately and lovingly intertwined to compose a magnificent and overwhelming tableau, which includes everything from the small events of everyday life to the most dramatic events that punctuate their existence. The cross of Saint Andrew thus becomes, by the intelligent and expert hand of Camilo José Cela -whose habitual mastery has earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature-, in a lucid and penetrating moral reflection on the human condition and the ups and downs that they lie in wait, in which the surprising counterpoint of a humor tinged with pity and tenderness is not lacking; This is a masterpiece of contemporary Spanish literature, one of the most exciting readings of recent times. This novel has won the 1994 Planeta Prize.
