The mythical city of Cibola and the search for a new El Dorado led Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to the south of United States (1540-1542). For the first time, European eyes saw those lands: vast deserts, red canyons, large plains with dense masses of buffalo, dangerous Native American tribes: as the Apaches among others... Those were the years of conquest and evangelization of a still unknown part of the New World, years bursting with confrontations and diseases, but also of glories and reached goals. Those were days of massacres suffered and committed on both sides, and of happenings as significant in History as the fall of the Mexican civilization; but which, in turn, were like any other period of time: regular days when humans lived, suffered, loved and died; men and women (the latter playing an almost forgotten role), who shaped a world that still dazzles us today.

It is the open, nonconformist, astonished and admired look of a Franciscan friar, Fray Tomás de Urquiza, who tells us his story. Years later, in 1564, he remembers the expedition he had joined, twenty years before, to accompany Coronado… and how things, ever since, had never been the same.

As a Chronicler of Indies of the 16th Century, Ignacio del Valle treats us a vibrant yet meticulous narrative, in which vivid cinematography images reach the reader as a close-up. Thanks to Fray Tomás’ successful vision, full of pros and cons, we immerse ourselves in the Americas of the mid-16th century.