La vejez de Heliogábalo

Claudio, Count of Medina la Vieja, is now living through his most difficult years. His faded youth and dwindling fortune, the result of a life of extravagance, have reduced him to a mere shadow of his former self. Those who know him well aptly nickname him Heliogabalus, after that dissolute young emperor. Claudio reminisces about his glorious past while confronting the inevitable reality, alternating his time between the tedious gatherings of the upper class and the sordid debauchery of the underworld, enduring the ugliness of his days lulled by ether and other substitutes for lost happiness. The antihero of this decadent tale, he represents the last vestige of a social class soon to be swallowed up by the new century. A roguish portrait of late 19th-century Spain, where bullfighters and cabaret singers triumphed, and the nights were intoxicating with pure flamenco and bohemian spirit. Prostitutes and pimps with a razor blade mingle with poetasters and second-rate artists, a happy and confident prelude to the terrifying Spain that would come later.