La Piedra Blanda / The Soft Stone

Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial La Piedra Blanda Comic Multicolor . La Piedra Blanda" is a unique comic born from the collaboration of writer Rodrigo Cortés and engraver Tomás Hijo. It chronicles the inexplicable life of Pedro de Poco, a man who has experienced countless roles yet remains a beating, soft stone in a world of indifferent miracles. This work, rooted in the picaresque tradition, is a tribute to the origins of books. Cortés describes the text as full of frank mysteries and dazzling imagery, while Hijo sees his engravings as a pleasure to explore, where words dissolve into ink. Together, they´ve created a harmonious "motet for two voices," a seamless blend where text and image are inseparable. Pedro de Poco was born face down and on the second try.He has been a monk, thief, saint, beggar, shepherd, nothing.His life unfolds with the cadence of small things and big things, which are the same things, inexplicable and ignored.In the world of Pedro de Poco there are goldfinches, crows and vultures, sirens and children playing the vihuela, on a ground full of miracles that do not matter, wonderful and indifferent.Pedro de Poco is not indifferent, he is only a stone that beats.A soft stone.The soft stone is the result of the joint work between the writer and filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés and the engraver Tomás Hijo, a novel entirely carved, daughter of the picaresque tradition, which is also a tribute to the origin of all books, to the mystery and fascination of which the trees of the forest are made.``Rodrigo showed me the first draft of his idea in a bar in Madrid.I read it while he devoured a huge toast.The text was full of mysteries told with frankness and dazzling images invoked as ordinary things.There is an unmistakable (but difficult to describe) emotion that appears when you come across something like this: an impatience, an almost physical feeling of need, of wanting to grab a pencil and listen to the tip scratch the paper as ideas take shape´´. Tomás Hijo about Rodrigo Cortés ``To get lost in a engraving by Tomás is to abandon oneself to the pleasure of observing, looking for the seven differences without comparing anything with anything.How grateful the writer feels then, when the words dissolve in his ink and only the trail remains of them.Because La piedra blanda, needless to say, is not an illustrated text, it is a motet for two voices, a fugue for four hands, nothing is before or after, everything is a song of going and returning´´. Rodrigo Cortés about Tomás Hijo. tradeinn Techinn