Ibrahim's gang tails Quart and Macarena and tries to photograph them

Ibrahim's gang tails Lorenzo Quart and Macarena Bruner through Seville's Santa Cruz district in an effort to photograph them for Celestino Peregil, turning surveillance into a picaresque interlude of careful pursuit and slapstick incompetence. The gang's apparent success—there was enough light for photographs—gives way to a small but decisive discovery: Potro del Mantelete has opened the camera before rewinding the film, leaving the mission's results in doubt.

The Pursuit Through Santa Cruz

Don Ibrahim, Niña Puñales, and Potro del Mantelete follow the priest and the young duchess at a deliberate distance, taking turns in front so that no one position attracts suspicion. Sometimes Don Ibrahim walks with Niña Puñales while Potro trails behind; sometimes Potro advances alone or with Niña Puñales on his arm. Her burned arm is in a sling, so he offers her the uninjured one. The changing formation lets the three keep Quart and Macarena in sight while trying not to make their presence obvious.

The pursuit is complicated by Santa Cruz itself. Its irregular plan of turns, backtracks, and dead ends makes it difficult to track the couple without being noticed. When Quart and Macarena enter a closed little square and then retrace their steps after talking there for a few minutes, the three pursuers panic, tiptoe back through the shadows, and get out of the way. Their surveillance depends less on professional technique than on improvisation and luck.

The streets eventually offer an easier route: lanes with gentle bends and broad entrance halls where the gang can follow without much risk. Don Ibrahim relaxes enough to take out a cigar, while Potro del Mantelete and Niña Puñales walk eight or ten steps ahead, keeping watch on the couple. In quieter stretches, Niña Puñales slips off her high heels and carries them in her hand, moving barefoot so that her steps make less noise. Her camera, along with a crochet project and other personal odds and ends, is part of the incongruous equipment of the watch.

The Gang at Work

The narration lingers on the pursuers as much as on their targets. Don Ibrahim smokes beneath his broad Panama hat and carries a dented silver lighter. Potro del Mantelete, a former bullfighter and boxer, earns money with three-card tricks near Triana Bridge, using the confidence inspired by his grave manner to help the gang fleece a Puerto Rican tourist. He has spent those winnings on three shaded seats for Sunday's bullfight, a gesture that makes his surveillance work look like another irregular means of getting by rather than a disciplined operation.

Niña Puñales and Potro del Mantelete move with an old-fashioned courtesy that gives the gang its own small code of conduct. Potro offers his sound arm to Niña, and she goes barefoot when quiet matters. Their teamwork is genuine even as their trade is comic and opportunistic. The episode also recalls their earlier gasoline mishap: Don Ibrahim's eyebrows and mustache are singed, and Potro's left arm was briefly on fire before Niña Puñales doused them with a kitchen siphon and smothered the flames with a blanket. The burns remain visible during the tail, making their precarious trade literal as well as farcical.

Apparent Success and the Camera

After the couple passes, the three regroup beneath the Moorish portico of the mosque. Don Ibrahim sits down with difficulty, his cigar ash falling onto his large belly, and declares that they have been lucky: there was enough light for the photographs. Niña Puñales sits beside him with the camera on her lap, rubbing her aching, varicose ankles after the walk in her high heels. Potro remains standing as if on guard. The scene briefly presents the assignment as completed and the trio as satisfied with its execution.

Don Ibrahim asks where the pair have gone. Potro looks down the street and says they are heading toward Arenal, with time to catch up. Don Ibrahim hands him the camera and tells him to take out the film before it is spoiled. Potro, managing the camera with one hand while the other arm remains in a sling, opens it. Don Ibrahim searches for a second roll, unwraps it, and passes it over.

Then Don Ibrahim asks whether Potro rewound the film before opening the camera. Potro freezes, closes the camera abruptly, and asks what there was to rewind. Don Ibrahim stares at him for a long moment, holding the fresh roll in one hand and his cigar in the other, before reacting with blunt disbelief. The sequence overturns the earlier confidence that the light was good and the photographs were secured: the gang may have followed the couple successfully, but its handling of the camera has compromised the apparent result.

Narrative Function

The episode links the gang's low-level work for Peregil to the intimate story unfolding between Quart and Macarena: the couple's private walk becomes a target for covert photography, though the precise fate or later use of the images is not established here. By shifting attention from the watched pair to the watchers, the narrative turns a potentially intrusive act into a comic ensemble scene built out of streetcraft, bodily discomfort, and misplaced confidence.

Its humor comes from the gap between the gang's sense of duty and its practical errors. The three carefully rotate positions, retreat from a dead end, and find a route that allows them to keep the couple in view; yet the most consequential mistake occurs after the pursuit, when Potro opens the camera without rewinding the film. The episode leaves the operation suspended between apparent success and technical failure, while preserving the gang's loyalty to one another as a counterpoint to its ineptitude.