The chronicles tell that when the creator of labyrinths arrived in Barcelona on board a ship from the East, he already carried with him the germ of the curse that would dye the sky of the city with fire and blood. It was the year of grace 1454 and a plague of fever had decimated the population during the winter, leaving the city veiled by a blanket of ochre smoke that rose from the bonfires where corpses and shrouds of hundreds of deceased were burning. The spiral of miasma could be seen in the distance, creeping between towers and palaces to rise in a funerary omen that warned travelers not to approach the walls and to pass by. The Holy Office had decreed that the city be sealed, and its investigation had determined that the plague had originated in a well near the Jewish quarter of Call de Sanaüja, where a diabolical conspiracy of Semitic usurers had poisoned the waters, as days of iron-clad interrogations had proved beyond any doubt. With their considerable assets expropriated and what remained of their remains thrown into a pit in the swamp, it was only possible to hope that the prayers of good citizens would return God’s blessing to Barcelona. Every day that passed, fewer died and more felt that the worst was behind them. However, fate would have it that the former were the lucky ones and the latter would soon envy those who had already left that valley of misery. By the time some faint voice dared to suggest that a great punishment would fall from the heavens to purge the infamy perpetrated In Nomine Dei against the Jewish merchants, it was too late. Nothing fell from the sky except ash and dust. Evil, for once, came by sea.