Vitoria-Gasteiz is the setting where Alice Espanet’s brief visits to Ritxi become a permanent move and a marriage in prospect. The city appears through specific domestic and social spaces rather than through a broader portrait of its streets: Ritxi’s attic apartment in the centre, a dinner at his society, and the hotel and spa where his friends’ partners take Alice for her hen party. These settings mark her entry into a new life while exposing how little the people around her feel they know her.

Alice’s Move to the City

Two months after meeting Ritxi in Burdeos, Alice had moved to Vitoria-Gasteiz. Weekend visits lengthened into week-long stays; almost imperceptibly, she transferred all her belongings to the attic apartment Ritxi owned in the city centre. The account makes the move tangible through her luggage: one suitcase packed with makeup and another with clothes. Her relocation was swift, and the relationship soon followed it toward marriage.

A New Social World

Ritxi introduced Alice to his friends at a dinner he hosted at the society. They remembered little beyond the impression of a young, attractive, discreet woman—roughly what they had expected. When a wedding invitation arrived a few months later, they were not surprised. The men organized Ritxi’s bachelor weekend in Ibiza, while their partners, reluctantly and out of obligation, took Alice to brunch at the city’s only hotel then serving it and spent the afternoon at a spa.

The women did not become close friends with Alice, though their spokesperson said they treated her well. In her account, Alice kept her distance, declined to join their conversations, and answered with an ironic smile. She seemed to suggest that hardship set her apart from the group’s pampered, affluent women. The friends, in turn, resented what they saw as ingratitude from someone admitted into their privileged circle because Ritxi had chosen her. Her cool responses to their talk of fashion blogs and costly home renovations became material for gossip and private amusement.

The City as a Site of Scrutiny

Vitoria-Gasteiz’s social circle is presented through competing accounts rather than an authoritative judgment of Alice. The women’s testimony casts her as aloof and contemptuous; the narrator records that the group also gained hours of entertainment from talking about her, an interpretation she writes in her notebook rather than attributing directly to the witness. After the session, Jakes Ruiz de Infante challenges the narrator’s apparent sympathy for Alice by setting her against the witness he caricatures as a wealthy woman spending her husband’s money on expensive handbags and spa treatments. The exchange makes the city’s social world part of the book’s larger problem: Alice is being described by people who dislike her, while the narrator must decide how much weight to give their testimony.