Potato Omelette (84 pages) is a short novel aimed at stirring readers’ consciences and at bringing about a fairer society. It is a denunciation of male violence against women in the home. It won the Modesto R. Figueiredo Award in 2014 and has an introduction in the Galician edition by the author Emma Pedreira.

A woman sits down to prepare a potato omelette. She scrambles the eggs, but realizes she doesn’t have potatoes. She decides to go to Milucha’s shop to buy some, meets her husband, Moncho, on the way, they argue and he pushes her down the stairs. She is admitted to hospital, which is like a spa to her, not having to do housework, being able to sit by the window and drink coffee, even though she knows it won’t last (happiness comes in small doses). Moncho, meanwhile, has been chucked in a cell. When she gets home from hospital, there are some serious faces waiting for her.

The woman has a daughter who has emigrated to London, but she doesn’t want to worry her, so decides not to phone her to let her know what has happened. Her daughter is different. She would approach the guards without trembling, she’s not afraid. The woman prefers to keep it to herself, despite the disapproving looks she receives from the serious faces. Moncho returns after three days and kicks the woman on the floor. She is used to having to protect her organs and her head. She wonders what happened to the man she fell in love with, who seduced her with his charm.

The woman directs the five voices that talk to her against Moncho – one in the eyes, one in the privates, and so on. Moncho falls down dead. She has killed him. To start with, she misses being told what to do, the constant anxiety and sense of panic in the pit of her stomach. Then she positions her husband’s body on the sofa and sets about washing the kitchen floor before it is permanently stained by the blood. She receives a visit from Pili the postwoman. She asks how it’s going. Pili says more or less the same with Paco, her husband. So the woman gives her the five voices she used to kill her own husband in a bag, so she can use them as well. Then she feels alone.

The woman puts her husband’s slippers on the body, turns on the news, hands him an empty glass. She is used to having to serve him. At the beginning of their relationship, everything had been sunny. The woman’s mother, however, was set against Moncho, perhaps she recognized what kind of person he was. Nobody came to the wedding, but the woman didn’t mind. She was in love. That night, however, on seeing that the woman didn’t bleed, Moncho called her a “whore” and cut open her lip. The rest of their honeymoon was a nightmare. She later had a miscarriage.

Pili returns to the house, carrying the bag, and sees Moncho dead in the sitting room. She tells the woman they’ll have to get rid of the body and suggests putting him in the bathtub with some acid Paco uses to clean concrete. The woman is struck by her inability to show some kind of emotional reaction before her husband’s death. She notices the smell of burning coming from two doors down, at number 8, and hopes it’s this 39-year-old man who raped a 17-year-old girl in the same building. Her prayers are favourably received. There was a fire, and he was caught inside. Pili comes back with three bottles of acid to make sure they do the job properly. She is sure the bathtub will end up as clean as the Shah of Iran’s, only the woman is afraid the acid will eat away the ceramic and leave a hole down to the neighbours. With a great deal of difficulty, they get Moncho into the bathtub with his feet sticking out like spaghetti in a pan of boiling water. They ready themselves for chemical warfare by putting on apron and gloves, boots and sunglasses, and start pouring in the acid.

The acid isn’t terribly quick, so the two women take a break and eat some yoghurts. Pili suggests not telling the woman’s daughter to avoid her becoming an accomplice to the crime. She’ll have to invent some story. Meanwhile, Paco has been arrested and won’t be coming out of prison for quite some time. It turns out Paco lost his job and was unable to get another one because of his age and lack of education. He took to drink and found it difficult to accept it was Pili’s salary keeping them afloat. He slept with other women and ended up giving Pili HPV. As a result, Pili contracted uterine cancer, which has now spread. She is just glad that Paco is in prison and won’t be able to get at the children. He was arrested for crashing into a patrol car with civil guards, putting one in hospital and attacking the other with a wheel brace.

They go to give the girl at number 8 the same bag Pili used, in case she needs it as well, and discover that the man didn’t die in the fire, but has facial burns. On the way back, they meet a neighbour, María, in the lift, who recognizes the smell of acid coming from the woman’s apartment and suggests using mothballs to drive away the smell and ammonia to stop the acid leaving marks. The woman receives a message telling her the neighbour at number 8 doesn’t need the bag. The man has declared he tried to commit suicide. It also asks the woman to pick up Azrael, the cat whose shadow the woman has accepted into her house.

Pili asks the woman why it took her so long to do something about her husband. Before they were married, he was very kind. It was only after they were married that a line was drawn and she seemed to end up on the wrong side. She hoped he would change, but he never did. Pili is angry because she thinks the woman was living in a fairytale if she expected her husband to improve. They argue, but then make their peace. The woman is glad she will be able to sleep without being afraid. The next morning, the woman apologizes, she knows she was deceiving herself. The more he beat her, the more reason she had to deceive herself. She also wondered in part whether she was to blame; after that, it was their daughter that made her stay with Moncho. Pili is happy for her to talk, but says she has to take control of her life, not live in the past, since that will only perpetuate the agony.

Moncho’s body has more or less disintegrated in the acid, but there are some bits floating on the surface, which they remove with a sieve, the woman wraps in aluminium foil and Pili puts in a jam jar to take down to the rubbish. The woman removes the plug and watches her husband float down the drain. She then hears an explosion – she could swear the lid of the jam jar has just shot into the air. She sees Pili in the street with a police officer. The officer rings at her door, but she ignores it. She then hears María shouting at him and goes to rescue her and take her indoors for an infusion, leaving the officer to continue his investigations elsewhere. Pili explains that the acid and the aluminium foil created a kind of homemade bomb, which exploded when she put it in the rubbish. The police have attributed the bomb to a group of feminists angry about the rape of the girl at number 8.

The woman and Pili pour all sorts of products into the bathtub to make it look used and to remove any traces of the acid. Pili warns the woman that the hard part lies ahead of her and she is going to have to believe her lie. She advises her to look sad the first week, to tell the odd neighbour that Moncho has disappeared the second week, and to report his disappearance the third week. Also, to make a bit of a mess at home, so it looks like she is not well. Meanwhile, Pili plans to open up her house in the country and to enjoy the little time she has left there. The woman hands her the bag with the five voices – potatoes – in case she needs them, and Pili says she might just plant them in the ground and make more of them. The woman savours her free time. She even learns to play the accordion.

There is a doctor, who calls the woman by her name: Ana. The doctor says she has heard a very different story from Ana’s daughter. The woman refuses to say whether her version of events is real or made up. She needs the doctor to sign the piece of paper so she can stay there. The woman explains that she wants to stay so she can have a dignified death. She is now 85 years old. She doesn’t want to die in a strange land, like London, where her daughter is, but in Grobas, Pili’s village. In order to let her stay, the doctor, Carme, has to have proof that the woman’s version is real. According to her daughter, Moncho ran off with the woman’s friend, Pili, and they emigrated to South America. The only events the doctor is able to corroborate are the rape of the girl at number 8 and the explosion of a bomb. The woman puts her proof on the table – five potatoes – which she suspects the doctor will plant in order to continue the story.

Potato Omelette won the Modesto R. Figueiredo Award in 2014, but wasn’t published until 2019, making it into a kind of legend. Where had the book gone? Did it really exist? It is very well structured and has large doses of humour and lyricism. But the reality it describes – domestic violence – is a very serious one, which the author has succeeded in making the centre of her narrative. A memorable text.

Synopsis © Jonathan Dunne