Release date is 2025-10-27

Editor digital: Joan Queralt Gil

"Narracions estranyes" by Antoni Careta y Vidal is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The tales fuse everyday Catalan settings with uncanny turns and moral reckonings, showing how small choices can spiral into eerie consequences. The opening story follows a young conscript from Sant Feliu whose temptations in Barcelona collide with a disturbing, life-altering warning from the uncanny.

The opening of this collection follows a weaver engaged to Tereseta who, hoping to dodge the draft, even obeys a Barcelona charlatan’s advice to steal a cemetery bone and pray a novena—an act that fails, landing him in the artillery in Barcelona. Lonely and impressionable, he falls under Sergeant Robles’s bawdy influence, flirts with Susagna, a maid he meets near the Boqueria, and dines with her while her employers are away; when they return, she locks him in the pantry. There he falls into a nightmarish dream: he is arrested with Susagna, accused of murdering the old couple, tried by a military tribunal under a state of siege, consoled by a humane lieutenant and a chaplain, and finally executed by firing squad. He jolts awake at dawn in the pantry, takes the vision as a warning, breaks off with Susagna despite her pleas, sickens with remorse, and is tended by Robles and his Galician friend Pombo as he resolves to live decently. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Barcelona: Ilustració Catalana, 1905