Magalí Guerra Zabala

Magalí Guerra Zabala is a woman Lucas Pereyra meets in Valizas and later encounters again in Montevideo, where their correspondence and brief reunion acquire an intensity far greater than the time they share. She is both a person with her own family history and relationships and the center of Lucas’s idealized image of a city. Her pregnancy, her refusal to leave with him, and the unresolved question of whether she had any connection to his robbery ultimately expose the distance between his romantic projection and what he can know about her.

Identity and Background

At their first substantial conversation, Magalí Guerra Zabala is 28. Guerra is her father’s surname; she sometimes lives with him. Zabala is her mother’s surname, and her mother died several years earlier. These details give Lucas a partial account of her family, but not a complete understanding of her life. She also tells him that her boyfriend works as a roadie for a well-known metal band in Uruguay, a group Lucas says he does not know.

The meeting begins a correspondence that helps sustain Lucas’s interest after they part. As his boat approaches Colonia, his phone receives an email reply from her. Her messages become part of his emotional experience of Montevideo, although the correspondence does not make their relationship settled or clearly defined. In the account, she remains more than a figure in Lucas’s imagination, but much of what he reports about her reaches the reader through his fascinated, uncertain perspective.

Encounters and Lucas’s Idealization

During his walk through Montevideo, Lucas maps the city through a small number of familiar routes and landmarks. Avenida 18 de Julio serves as the spine of his mental map; he locates the bank district, La Pasiva, and other places in relation to it. Yet this practical geography is overtaken by his emotional association with Magalí Guerra Zabala. He describes himself as in love both with her and with the city where she lives, while recognizing that much of this imagined city is his own invention. The real streets and his inwardly constructed Montevideo become difficult to separate.

That imaginative habit also shapes the way he interprets ordinary details. A flyer advertising tattoos and piercings leads him to picture a genital piercing he believes she has, and to wonder about its circumstances, even though they have not discussed it in their email exchanges. The episode reveals the asymmetry of their connection: a passing object in the street can set off elaborate speculation for Lucas, while the actual history between them contains important gaps. His attraction makes the city seem to speak about her, but the associations are his, not evidence of her intentions.

The Palacio Salvo similarly gathers meaning through their shared references. Lucas remembers that Magalí Guerra Zabala had sent him a link to a solo album by Blur’s singer, whose cover showed the building. The sight of the landmark therefore joins the city’s architecture to the correspondence. When he later crosses a street by the University of the Republic, the building’s appearance on a 500-peso note makes the walk feel briefly like entering the image printed on the bill. Such moments show how local details, memory, and desire continually overlap in his experience of Montevideo.

Reunion and Conflicting Commitments

When Magalí Guerra Zabala reappears, she arrives from the rambla with a muzzled dog. Lucas recognizes her only after someone grips the back of his neck; she looks so different that he finds her almost unrecognizable. The abruptness of the encounter contrasts with the version of her he has carried through the city. She is present in a changed, immediate form, not simply as the remembered woman from Valizas or the subject of emails.

Later, during an intimate encounter, Lucas urges her to leave with him for Brazil that night and spend a week together. She does not agree. As their intimacy continues, she cries silently and tells him that she is also pregnant. She says she is in her second month and does not know whether she will have the child. This disclosure changes the terms of Lucas’s appeal: the imagined escape now confronts a consequential circumstance in her life. Her pregnancy is not a romantic obstacle he can resolve for her, and the scene provides no indication that she accepts his invitation.

The contrast is central to their relationship as presented. Lucas’s language and attention press toward departure, a shared future, and the possibility of being alone together in Brazil. Magalí Guerra Zabala’s answer instead brings the encounter back to the unsettled reality she faces. The narrative gives her disclosure weight without resolving her decision about the pregnancy or supplying a fuller account of her other commitments.

Parting, Suspicion, and Aftermath

After the encounter, they embrace and exchange a brief kiss. She turns back to blow him a kiss as she leaves, and Lucas watches her disappear. He wonders whether she may have avoided entering the police station with him and whether she might have planned what happened to him. These remain questions in his mind, not established facts. The scene ends with her gone and his interpretation unsettled.

Much later, Lucas sees a video in which he has to pause the image before recognizing Magalí Guerra Zabala. He then looks at her friend’s Facebook page, since Magalí Guerra Zabala has closed her own page. Photographs show each woman holding a child; another shows César feeding two children, each with a different mother. Lucas speculates that the five of them may live together, but explicitly does not know. The images suggest a family arrangement, not a confirmed account of their household or relationships.

Lucas says he and Magalí Guerra Zabala exchanged no further emails and that their connection gradually cooled into silence. He is glad she became a mother and reads the video as showing her apparently content, while the more domestic photographs make her look tired to him. His final uncertainty concerns the robbery: he is 98 percent sure she was not involved, but the remaining doubt persists because of the silence after the second blow. That small unresolved remainder prevents the relationship from becoming a simple story of either devotion or betrayal. Magalí Guerra Zabala’s significance lies partly in this limit: Lucas can imagine a shared life, revisit her image, and speculate about her choices, but the silence leaves her actual role in the robbery and the later shape of her family life beyond his knowledge.