On the list of the Spanish Casa del Libro’s best-selling books in the summer of 2012.
First edition published by AM Editorial in 2012.
Second edition published by Ápeiron Ediciones (Arte-facto Collection) in 2022.
I.S.B.N. 978-84-125697-4-2.
Country of publication: Spain.
Language: Spanish.
“Miguel Berzal de Miguel presents us with a work of a certain dark tone, but only on the surface, showing a maturity and sensitivity that invite us to reflect on those sorrows of our soul that we do not allow to heal.
The tales in El Refugio (The Refuge) are stories of characters that force the reader to face feelings that are disagreeable, and at times shameful, but completely real and very human.
Their virtue lies in that, starting from the premise that people feel negative emotions, the author manages to develop an interior conflict in the character’s psychology to take him to a positive outcome, where the solution consists in admitting that the negative point exists, but that it must be left behind.
He thus ensures that fear, lies, envy, hatred, animosity, rage, guilt, excessive ambition … are defeated by forgiveness through friendship, love in its various forms, generosity, and understanding. Because only by using the surprising human capacity for generating positive feelings can we achieve a state of inner peace.
The overall idea that El Refugio seems to convey to us is that we shouldn’t deny these feelings because we feel they are unworthy, since they do exist. But we can also learn to neutralise them with others of our own, infinitely more positive.
In this way, what at first seemed dark becomes filled with light. The austere, shadowy room has a door leading towards brightness. Each of us has the choice of staying among the devastated remains or daring to cross that threshold”.
Historias en Tinta (Spain)
“Your characters have ideals; they all dream about something, for example, being love”.
El Impacto Digital (Spain)
“A penetrating observation. Complex stories, some extremely harsh and, nevertheless, created and narrated with utter beauty, simplicity, and depth”.
Zona Retiro (Spain)
“A perfect extension of his multifaceted sensitivity and distinctly poetic and cultural nature. From this work, his distinct stylistic choice emerges simple but at the same time deep in the concept that touches universal themes inserted in the frame of everyday life. The author suggests not hiding wounds but accepting them as part of life and moving forward without having boulders on the heart”.
Celebre Magazine (Switzerland)
“Beauty, kindness, love, forgiveness, but also cruelty, brutality, evil, and pain are present in his work along with great depth, realism, and simplicity. Miguel Berzal de Miguel creates characters that are hard to forget, from whom you don’t want to be parted. His books are a lucid diagnosis of the world in which we live, a profound dissection of the human being”.
Film Daily News (USA)