Quart clashes with Oscar inside the residence

Quart’s clash with Father Óscar inside the residence is a brief, ugly fight that becomes a turning point in their relationship: after using force to get past the enraged young priest, Quart stops treating him simply as an obstacle and tries to understand what he is defending. Óscar, in turn, makes plain that his loyalty to Father Príamo Ferro places him against the bank, the archbishop, and even the authorities who sent Quart from Rome.

The Confrontation in the Residence

Quart is inspecting a residence where he has not been invited when Father Óscar catches him in the passage and demands to know what he is doing. Quart tries to pass, but Óscar shifts to block him. The narrow hallway turns their disagreement into a physical contest: Óscar throws a blind, furious punch, which Quart avoids, then swings again and catches Quart glancingly on the jaw.

Quart initially tries to calm the situation, but when Óscar attacks a second time, he responds with practiced, unspectacular force. He kicks Óscar in the groin and follows with a punch behind the ear, leaving the priest on his knees against the wall. The exchange is neither a victory to celebrate nor a clean exercise of authority. Quart is immediately embarrassed that two priests have ended up fighting “like louts,” and he apologizes for having failed to prevent the encounter from becoming an absurdity.

From Force to Conversation

The aftermath changes the register of the scene. Quart picks up Óscar’s fallen glasses, helps him to his feet, and supports him into the sitting room. He fetches water while Óscar, still doubled over and short of breath, recovers in a chair amid copies of Vida Nueva. The physical details—Óscar’s disordered hair, flushed face, and glasses marked by a fingerprint—make his anger look less like a show of strength than a loss of control under pressure.

Óscar admits that he lost his head; Quart answers that both of them did. He says he has not come to make trouble but to understand. To reopen a conversation that the fight might have ended, Quart invokes the duty of obedience and the hacker’s message received in Rome, then raises the suspicion that Óscar is Vísperas. Óscar rejects the accusation, but the question forces the underlying conflict into the open: Quart is investigating, while Óscar believes the people and institutions around the parish are already taking sides against it.

Óscar’s Chosen Side

Once he has recovered enough to sit upright and meet Quart’s gaze, Óscar declares that a war is being fought and that he has chosen his side. He calls Father Ferro good and honest, and condemns “the others”—a category he expands to include everyone from the bank to the archbishop and even the people who dispatched Quart from Rome. His declaration recasts the hallway assault: Óscar’s violence is part of a defensive posture toward a struggle he regards as already under way, though it does not excuse the blow or settle whether his suspicions are right.

Asked what they mean to defend themselves from, Óscar answers that they are defending themselves from the Church itself. He argues that the institution has betrayed its original message and recounts what he sees as successive losses: much of Europe after the Reformation, reason after its condemnation, workers who recognized the Church’s alignment with masters and oppressors, and, in the present century, young people and women. He imagines empty pews and mice where a living congregation should be. His language makes the conflict larger than a dispute over one priest’s conduct: for Óscar, the parish is caught between a lived faith and an institution that has lost the people it claims to serve.

The Parish as a Place of Resistance

Óscar’s explanation moves from the Church’s public history to the workings of its internal hierarchy. At the seminary, he says, he came to believe that the system ran on forms, ambition, and submission: young priests learned to attach themselves to a professor, friend, or bishop who could advance them. He contrasts that careerism with the pastoral task of giving people the spiritual sign they seek, lest they fall instead into the hands of fortune-tellers, astrologers, and spiritual hucksters. His anger is therefore not merely personal loyalty to Father Ferro; it arises from the gulf he perceives between institutional advancement and the consolation parishioners need.

The Institution Óscar Opposes

Óscar’s indictment is sharpened by the practical dispute behind the confrontation. The archbishop explains that Ferro says Mass every day at eight in the morning, and describes the elderly priest as proud, unruly, and out of step with the world around him. He says Ferro even recites parts of the Mass in Latin because he believes the language commands greater respect. Yet Óscar’s loyalty is not simply an endorsement of Ferro’s habits: he sees the parish’s conflict as a test of whether the Church serves its people or protects its own hierarchy.

That contrast is visible when Quart later attends Mass at Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas. Ferro wears an old-fashioned amice beneath his vestments and a guitar-shaped chasuble, garments associated with an earlier liturgical era. He celebrates some portions in Latin, although Church rules since Paul VI had called for Mass in the congregation’s own language so that worshippers could understand and participate. The service’s formal authority lies partly in those inherited gestures and words; its human effect lies in the quiet attention of the modest congregation, for whom the ritual offers consolation, warmth, and a companion in darkness. The scene gives material weight to the kind of pastoral service Óscar says the institution has neglected.

The parish’s resistance also has a concrete legal and financial setting. Its continued existence is tied to a condition that Mass be said every Thursday for Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, on the anniversary of his death in 1709. Because that observance keeps the church protected from demolition, an archdiocesan representative and a notary paid by Pencho Gavira watch for any lapse. Meanwhile, Banco Cartujano has proposed using the site in a transaction that would benefit the diocese, provide compensation, fund a church in one of Seville’s poorest neighborhoods, and establish a foundation supporting social work among the Roma community. The offer is presented as charitable as well as profitable, but it remains suspended by Ferro’s insistence on maintaining the parish’s observances.

Macarena Bruner fears that removing Óscar from the parish could leave Ferro exposed to pressure. If another priest failed to say the required Mass or overlooked its formula, the church could be demolished, allowing the archbishop and the bank to prevail. The clash in the residence thus opens onto a struggle in which obedience, ritual, and institutional power have immediate consequences: the fight does not resolve the dispute, but it reveals why Óscar treats the parish as a defensive position rather than a merely local disagreement.

The Parish’s Ritual Defense and Its Stakes

The parish’s resistance has a concrete legal and financial setting. Its continued existence is tied to the condition that Mass be said every Thursday for Gaspar Bruner de Lebrija, on the anniversary of his death in 1709. The ritual is more than a devotional observance: it keeps the church protected from demolition. An archdiocesan representative and a notary paid by Pencho Gavira watch for any lapse, turning the Thursday service into a point of surveillance as well as worship. The repetition that sustains a community also serves as a test imposed by those who may benefit if it fails.

The archbishop describes Father Ferro as celebrating Mass every day at eight in the morning, and portrays the elderly priest as proud, unruly, and out of step with the world around him. Ferro even recites parts of the Mass in Latin because he believes the language commands greater respect. When Quart later attends a service at Nuestra Señora de las Lágrimas, these habits take visible form: Ferro wears an old-fashioned amice beneath his vestments and a guitar-shaped chasuble, garments associated with an earlier liturgical era. He celebrates portions in Latin despite Church rules since Paul VI calling for Mass in the congregation’s own language, so that worshippers can understand and participate. Yet Quart sees the ritual’s effect on the modest congregation: its inherited words and gestures gather attention and offer consolation, warmth, and the sense of a companion in darkness. The service gives concrete human meaning to the pastoral care Óscar believes the institution has neglected.

The Church’s financial proposal makes the conflict harder to reduce to a simple opposition between greed and charity. Banco Cartujano has a transaction ready for the church site that would benefit the diocese, provide compensation, fund a church in one of Seville’s poorest neighborhoods, and establish a foundation supporting social work among the Roma community. The archbishop presents these benefits as a persuasive answer to a parish with little income and restoration work difficult to continue. Nevertheless, the proposed operation remains suspended because Ferro insists on maintaining the observances that protect the church. A charitable promise and a development deal occupy the same transaction; the parish’s survival is caught between them.

Macarena Bruner fears that removing Óscar from the parish could leave Ferro exposed. If another priest failed to say the required Thursday Mass or overlooked its formula, the church could be demolished, allowing the archbishop and the bank to prevail. That fear gives Óscar’s declaration of a chosen side its practical urgency: the dispute is not only over his loyalty to Ferro or his anger at ecclesiastical hierarchy, but over who controls the ritual condition and, with it, the fate of the building. The fight in the residence resolves nothing. It does, however, disclose the stakes behind Óscar’s resistance and the institutional struggle in which Quart has been ordered to remain neutral.