The Manzana de las Luces (“Block of Lights”) is a walled block in the east of Torregrises housing the regime’s printing press, above a network of catacombs.
| Type | Walled block; catacombs |
| City | Santa María de Torregrises |
| Custodian | Captain Cipriano Benítez |
| Spanish entry | Manzana de las Luces y Catacumbas |
Description
It stands beside the intramural crops. Its walls, nearly three meters high, are patrolled by men in red — mute, deaf, wounded to various degrees — whose disability guarantees discretion. Inside works the press known in books as that of the Foundlings (Niños Expósitos), now an organ of the regime and a print shop serving Clavijero, the long-lived Jesuit whom power keeps close because he knows too much and is worth too much.
Catacombs
Under its foundations runs a network of catacombs connecting to deeper, older galleries, known to those who run the city but absent from any freely circulating map. Beyond the first chamber they descend to an abyss spanned by a rope bridge, guarded by figures the neighbors call socomuros: blind and mute, recruited from the same human quarry as the wall guards.
Destruction of the press
Barrels of gunpowder smuggled in as barrels of salt blew up the press and shook the catacombs. The regime at once blamed the Unitarians; official propaganda spoke of dead children and Unitarian savagery. The catacombs survived and remained in use by those who knew the way.