Macarena undergoes an abortion and hysterectomy

Macarena undergoes an abortion and hysterectomy in a decision shaped by her desire for a child, Pencho Gavira’s pressure, and her love for her husband. The pregnancy ends in a medical emergency that leaves her permanently unable to become a mother; for a long time, Pencho does not know what the intervention cost her. When Macarena finally tells Lorenzo Quart, the revelation recasts the marriage as more than a separation between estranged spouses: it carries a concealed bodily loss and a secret known only to a few people.

The pregnancy and Pencho’s pressure

Macarena discloses the history while Quart is questioning her about her life. She resists his attempt to leave without hearing the rest, insisting that he has asked questions about everyone and can therefore hear hers. Her wish for a child had been bound up with a fear of the void in her life: she wanted a son or daughter to soften the sense that there was nothing beneath her feet but an abyss. Pencho, by contrast, argued that the timing was wrong, that their lives were at a crucial point, and that they should wait until later. Macarena presents those arguments as a succession of postponements rather than a shared decision to become parents.

She became pregnant despite Pencho’s objections. According to her account, he then pressed her harder than anyone ever had, urging her to terminate the pregnancy. The choice therefore takes place under marital pressure, but Macarena describes herself as acting from love for her husband. As a Catholic, she resisted for as long as she could; ultimately, she entered a clinic and had the abortion, against Father Príamo Ferro’s opinion. The conflict is not framed as a simple break with her faith: her religious identity and her attachment to Pencho pull in different directions, and she chooses the marriage even as that choice leads to an irreversible physical consequence.

The medical emergency and its lasting consequence

The procedure did not proceed normally. Macarena suffered a uterine perforation and arterial bleeding, and doctors had to perform an emergency hysterectomy. She makes the significance of the operation explicit to Quart: she will never be able to become a mother again. Her repeated insistence on that finality turns the disclosure from a report about an abortion into the account of a permanent loss. The desired child was not simply deferred, as Pencho had proposed; the possibility of motherhood was removed altogether.

The narrative places this consequence in Macarena’s own voice, as she explains what happened rather than leaving the medical facts to inference. She watches Quart as she recounts it, and his realization that she had the abortion comes before her confirmation. Her bitter smile and the moonlit reflections in her eyes accompany the exchange, but the essential force lies in the contrast between the quietness of her account and the enormity of what cannot be undone. When Quart asks what Father Ferro said, Macarena answers that he said nothing; though old and having seen too much, he continues to give her communion when she asks.

A concealed history and its witnesses

The intervention was kept from Pencho in a way that shaped the couple’s understanding of what followed. Macarena did not allow him to accompany her during the operation. He believed that the abortion had been uncomplicated, and when she returned home convalescing, everything appeared to him to be going well. Her account thus distinguishes the physical event from the knowledge available within the marriage: Pencho had urged the abortion, yet she concealed the hysterectomy and its consequence from him.

The circle of people who knew was exceptionally small. Before speaking to Quart, Macarena says that only Father Ferro and Gris knew; Quart becomes the next person entrusted with the secret. Gris did not approve of Macarena’s decision to abort, and the disagreement nearly cost them their friendship. Yet when the operation became complicated, Gris came to Macarena’s side. Her disapproval and her practical presence coexist: the friendship is strained by the choice, but it endures through the emergency.

Disclosure, faith, and the marriage

Macarena makes the disclosure in a conversation that resembles confession without becoming one. She urges Quart to imagine himself in the confessional, but he tells her that hearing her is not his office and says he does not want to hear her confession. Macarena replies that he cannot avoid receiving the account, while clarifying that she is not asking for absolution. The exchange keeps the story of the operation within a tension between religious confession and personal testimony: she wants the priest to hear what happened, not to erase its moral or emotional weight with a formal pardon.

Her references to Catholicism are part of the account rather than a simple verdict on it. She resisted the abortion because she was Catholic, proceeded against Father Ferro’s advice, and continued to receive communion from him afterward. The episode leaves those facts together without suggesting that the sacrament resolves her loss. Her permanent infertility remains the concrete consequence, while faith persists as a practice and a relation to the people who know her history.

Significance within the story

The revelation gives the separation from Pencho a private history that cannot be reduced to their present estrangement. His pressure to end the pregnancy and his belief that the procedure was normal contrast with the secret Macarena carried back into their home: the intervention had cost her the possibility of motherhood. Her account also shows how the novel’s conflicts over obligation and authority enter intimate life, where a decision made under marital pressure has consequences no later reconciliation of appearances can reverse.

The scene’s structure makes the loss arrive by stages. Macarena first states that she wanted a child and that Pencho did not; she then recounts the pressure, confirms that she went through with the abortion, and finally names the emergency hysterectomy and its permanence. Quart’s inference immediately before her confirmation marks the moment when the scattered parts of the story come together. The scene does not turn the medical tragedy into a mystery to be solved: its central revelation is what Macarena lost, what Pencho never knew, and what she is willing, at last, to let Quart hear.