Peñuelas

Peñuelas is the municipal architect whose death gives the threatened demolition of Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas a more troubling dimension. Sent to prepare the official ruin assessment that could clear the way for the church’s closure, he falls from its roof after a scaffold railing gives way. His death is presented by the local archbishop as an accident, but the presence of other people at the church makes it part of the inquiry rather than a mere administrative detail.

Identity and Assignment

Peñuelas was a municipal architect commissioned by the Seville City Council to prepare the file declaring Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas structurally ruined. The archbishop describes the church as already condemned and says the process of securing an official ruin designation had encountered both technical and administrative obstacles. The regional cultural heritage authority had relinquished responsibility for preservation on budgetary grounds, and the city was close to endorsing that position. Peñuelas’s assessment therefore stood at a consequential point in the effort to close the church and advance its demolition.

Death at the Church

According to the archbishop’s account, Peñuelas was not well liked and had had two notable altercations with Father Ferro, who was himself far from mild-tempered. During Peñuelas’s visits to the building, a wooden railing on the scaffolding gave way. He fell from the roof and was impaled on one of the metal tubes being installed there. The archbishop calls the death bad luck, a description that treats the fall as an accident rather than evidence of wrongdoing.

Peñuelas was not alone at the site. Another municipal official was with him, and Father Óscar, the vicar, was also present; Father Óscar administered the last rites. Lorenzo Quart asks specifically whether Peñuelas had been accompanied, testing the circumstances behind the archbishop’s account. The surviving details establish witnesses and a fatal sequence, but do not establish that anyone caused the fall.

Consequences and Significance

Peñuelas’s death delays the ruin proceedings: the archbishop says that the file had not yet been closed because of the incident. He presents it as an unfortunate complication in an otherwise nearly completed administrative process. For Quart, however, Peñuelas is one of two people connected with the church who have died in a short time. The other is a cleric who had been there, apparently pressuring Father Ferro on the archbishop’s behalf. Together, the deaths make a conflict over a church site and valuable property harder to dismiss as routine.

Peñuelas’s role remains brief but structurally important. His assignment links the church’s physical condition to the city’s plans for its future, while his death interrupts the bureaucratic process meant to certify that condition. The archbishop’s repeated framing of the fall as bad luck contrasts with Quart’s attention to witnesses and timing. The novel does not resolve the death through Peñuelas himself; instead, his absence becomes part of the uncertainty surrounding the church and the interests gathered around it.