Manel Loureiro

Manel Loureiro is a Spanish novelist born in Pontevedra, Galicia, in 1975. Trained as a lawyer, he became widely known for *Apocalipsis Z*, a zombie story that he first published online in installments before it appeared as a book in 2007. That path from internet serial to published novel is a distinctive part of his career: the story attracted readers before it reached bookstores and grew into a trilogy.

The first *Apocalipsis Z* novel follows a lawyer in Galicia as reports of a deadly outbreak give way to the collapse of ordinary life. Its narrator records what is happening around him while trying to survive with his cat, Lúculo. Loureiro continued the story in *Los días oscuros* and *La ira de los justos*. The books took a genre often associated with American settings and placed its early events in places familiar to the author. The contrast between a recognizable Galician home and a rapidly spreading catastrophe is central to the opening novel.

Loureiro did not confine his subsequent books to that series. *El último pasajero* centers on the mystery of the *Valkirie*, a ship found adrift with a baby aboard. He also wrote *Fulgor*, *Veinte*, *La puerta* and *La ladrona de huesos*. These titles mark his move from a continuing apocalypse narrative to standalone novels involving different kinds of suspense. His later work *Cuando la tormenta pase* won the Fernando Lara Novel Prize in 2024. The prize brought attention to a book set on Ons, an island off the Galician coast, where a storm leaves its protagonist unable to depart.

In 2024, the first *Apocalipsis Z* book also reached the screen. The film *Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End*, directed by Carles Torrens and starring Francisco Ortiz, was released on Prime Video. Its adaptation returned to the work that had established Loureiro’s readership years earlier, retaining the premise of a man facing an outbreak from his home in Galicia.

The online beginnings of *Apocalipsis Z*, its two published sequels, the later standalone novels and the screen adaptation trace a career rooted in specific stories rather than a single format. Pontevedra and Galicia are more than biographical details in that account: they are also settings through which Loureiro has told stories of disaster and suspense.