Marta Platel (Barcelona) is a journalist and writer. A graduate in Information Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, she has developed her professional career in the magazine sector, where she has worked in writing, coordination, and editing for publications covering general news, sports, and design. After making her fiction debut with The Last Flight of the Queen Bee, she now publishes her second novel, The Maids’ Dance, winner of the XXXI Fernando Lara Novel Prize and published by Editorial Planeta.
Set in Barcelona in 1941, during the post-war period, the novel follows the story of Melisa Arranz, a young woman who arrives from a rural background to work as a maid for an affluent family in the city. Through her perspective — that of someone living in the invisible spaces of large houses — Platel reconstructs a universe marked by social inequalities, scarcity, surveillance, and the silences imposed after the Civil War.
The plot combines a portrayal of the daily life of domestic workers with elements of intrigue and family secrets. While the upper classes try to regain a semblance of normalcy, the maids become privileged witnesses to the contradictions, appearances, and conflicts that unfold behind the doors of bourgeois residences. The presence of Nazi circles in Barcelona at the time adds an additional layer of historical tension to the narrative.
With careful settings that recreate real locations in the city (from markets and cafés to popular dance halls), the novel focuses on the condition of working women in the post-war era, their capacity for survival, and the weight of secrets in a deeply fractured society.
The Maids’ Dance offers an intimate approach to one of the most complex periods in recent Spanish history, giving voice to those who, from the margins, observed and endured the day-to-day realities of an era marked by fear and reconstruction.
