One day, while reading a selection of stories by the seventeenth-century Chinese writer Pu Songling, Nazario came across a short story entitled El Perro Libidinoso (The Lustful Dog), and immediately thought of adapting it into a comic.

Newly married women are abandoned by their emigrant husbands shortly after the wedding. Sometimes years will pass before they return. Their virginity broken, the women scarcely experience pleasure. Their husbands are warriors caught up in a long campaign, and their honour is protected by high walls and the watchful eyes of their families.

As Nazario explains, ‘The story is quite graphic, so I only had to make major changes in order to tell it in panels. I turned the narrator into a woman who told the story to her lover, whom she had found naked in her arms. I thought that by putting the story into the voice of a female narrator I would create greater complexity, understanding and tenderness towards the protagonist, emphasising her loneliness and her tragic and humiliating fate.’

Amantes was included in the 2021 La Cúpula collection Nuevas Mujeres Raras.