Cathedral of Rubble (Catedral de escombros)

A journey through major real-life disasters to show that collapses are not accidents, but the result of known decisions that were ignored. Architect and science communicator Pedro Torrijos León examines how those decisions are made, postponed, and justified when it is already too late.

The world does not collapse all at once: it deteriorates slowly, shows warning signs, and sends signals that are almost always ignored. Cathedral of Rubble starts from this idea to build a literary essay on collapse as a constant condition of contemporary society. It does not speak only of buildings that fall, but of postponed decisions, accumulated errors, and systems that continue to function even when their failures are already visible.

The book is structured as a series of major real-life disasters connected by the same logic: none of them was unforeseeable. In Bangladesh, the Rana Plaza building collapsed in 2013 after obvious cracks and evacuation orders were ignored, causing the deaths of more than 1,100 textile workers. In Seoul, the Sampoong Department Store collapsed in just twenty seconds after years of illegal renovations, disregarded technical warnings, and decisions made to avoid interrupting commercial activity, resulting in 502 deaths and nearly one thousand injured. In France, the Malpasset Dam was not emptied in order to avoid halting roadworks and assuming immediate economic losses; the reservoir continued to fill until the structure gave way and a wave devastated the valley, causing 423 deaths. In Italy, the Vajont Dam held firm, but the decision to keep the reservoir full despite the risk of landslides led to an entire mountainside plunging into the water, generating a wave more than 200 meters high that destroyed several villages and caused nearly 2,000 deaths. In Washington, the roof of a theater collapsed under the accumulated weight of snow after a chain of calculation and maintenance errors that were never clearly resolved.

The book’s point of departure is the 2024 Valencia flood, which serves as a narrative thread. The occupation of flood-prone areas, the normalization of basements and ground floors as living spaces, and the lack of preventive measures in the face of a known risk led to more than two hundred people dying trapped in homes and vehicles.

Cathedral of Rubble is neither a book of denunciation nor an academic essay. It is a narrative reflection on how disaster is constructed and, above all, how it is told afterward. It proposes a powerful idea: learning to read the signs, to listen to the silence before collapse, and to defend ordinary life as a fragile balance. A forceful literary essay, structured like a map of ruins, that compels the reader to confront what sustains—and threatens—our present.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Pedro Torrijos is a Spanish architect, writer, and science communicator with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. He has published essays and narrative works, collaborates regularly with the media, and is known for bringing technical and urban issues into public debate through stories based on real events.

Because of its fragmented structure and grounding in real events, Cathedral of Rubble is an ideal work for adaptation into a non-fiction series.

Each chapter addresses a different case, with identifiable settings, decisions, and consequences, facilitating its development into documentary or serialized formats focused on preventable disasters and contemporary processes of collapse.

What the press and critics say:

“An extraordinary book about architecture and catastrophe.” — Juan José Millás

“Absolutely colossal. I cannot recommend it enough. I stomped, I cried, I screamed, I was fascinated by sheer horror.” — Sabina Urraca

“A gripping book, written with the narrative wisdom Pedro Torrijos has accustomed us to. His oblique, distinctive gaze, always attentive to overlooked but essential details that others fail to see.” — Agustín Fernández-Mallo

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Feature Film, TV Film.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.