Fuentidueña is a village invoked in the hospital through the peril attached to a wounded soldier’s family: his father is its Popular Front mayor, and the soldier believes that returning home would mean execution by the Fascists. The place becomes more than a point of origin; it names the political threat that Guillermo García must confront while trying to keep the young man alive.

The village and its political significance

The evidence identifies Fuentidueña through the soldier’s account of his father, the village’s Popular Front mayor. That connection makes home dangerous rather than protective. The soldier insists that he cannot safely leave the hospital and that, if he went back to the village, he would certainly be shot. His fear gives Fuentidueña a sharply defined place in the story: it is the home to which a wounded man cannot return.

The wounded soldier’s fear

After surgery, the soldier renews his plea to Guillermo, warning that the doctor will be doing him a grave disservice by letting him go. Guillermo answers that being the son of a mayor does not mean the soldier himself will be executed; his father might be imprisoned, but the young man is only a soldier and still has a life ahead of him. Their exchange sets hope against the patient’s conviction that political association has already sealed his fate. Fuentidueña remains present in the scene as the place where that feared consequence would become real.

Medical care and the route to morphine

The soldier’s survival also depends on a shortage of basic medical supplies. Guillermo tells Manuel Arroyo that he has amputated both legs of a young man without anaesthetic or morphine and asks whether Manuel can obtain painkillers; even a box of aspirin would be precious. Forty-five minutes later, a boy returns with a package. Guillermo injects an ampoule of morphine into the son of Fuentidueña’s mayor. The village’s political danger is thus joined to a concrete act of care: a patient who fears what awaits him at home receives urgently needed relief in the hospital.

Narrative significance

Fuentidueña is not developed as a setting through description; its significance comes through the people and risks attached to its name. The mayor’s political office places his son under threat, while Guillermo’s reassurance and the later delivery of morphine redirect the scene toward what can still be done for him. The village consequently anchors a compact contrast between violence outside the hospital and the fragile, resource-dependent work of preserving life within it.