Five Hours to Freedom

Zaragoza, 1838. The city is about to fall to Carlist forces, but it resists with grit, gunpowder, and pride. Deep within the city walls, Joaquín Espés, a renegade former soldier, a blacksmith marked by betrayal and loss, faces an impossible decision: save his son, kidnapped by his former comrades… or keep intact the defence of the city that has rejected him.

In just five hours, as gunpowder trembles underground and cannons roar on the surface, Joaquín must choose between the blood that remains and the city that despises him. A short historical novel of suffocating moral tension, portraying with raw honesty the price of redemption and the ambiguity of heroism. Based on real events, the heroic Cincomarzada that thwarted the Carlist siege of Zaragoza, it combines documentary precision with intimate, sober, and devastating storytelling.