Gabino de la Fuente

Gabino de la Fuente, usually addressed as Don Gabino, is the owner of La Meridiana, the agency where Guillermo works. A former comrade of Clara Stauffer from their youth in Salamanca, he becomes a discreet business intermediary for her clandestine operations. His role is consequential precisely because it is limited: he offers access to the agency and its shipping, but the practical work remains embedded in an ordinary business whose employees he cannot simply command or bypass.

Identity and Background

Gabino is introduced as a senior employer whose manner toward Guillermo has generally been distant. The narrator recalls that Gabino had barely answered his greetings on the few occasions they crossed paths in the corridor. That reserve makes his sudden warmth startling: when Clara brings them together, Gabino smiles at Guillermo, apparently for the first time, before turning back to her. The change in manner marks Clara’s presence as the reason for his friendliness, rather than a new intimacy with his employee.

Their shared past reaches back to the “glorious years of Salamanca,” as Gabino calls them. He remembers the camaraderie and hopeful feeling of that period, and Clara answers that youth has gone and will not return. Their exchange establishes a bond built on a remembered political generation and a shared past, though the scene does not specify its full history. For Gabino, the recollection is more than polite nostalgia: it provides the personal trust through which Clara can approach him about business.

Clara Stauffer and the Agency

Clara arranges a lunch with Guillermo five days in advance, using the same invitation she had made when they met in Cercedilla the previous year: she wants to introduce him to a dear friend. Guillermo initially misreads the invitation, then discovers that the friend is Gabino, the owner of the company. Gabino joins Clara in praising Guillermo’s generosity toward good causes, although he admits he did not know that the two of them shared a friend. Clara speaks for Guillermo and moves the meeting along, presenting their relationship as established and her request as something that can be handled through personal confidence.

Clara later explains the bargain’s safeguards. She has spoken with Gabino and trusts him, but his agency is a business that could be ruined if Spain’s enemies put it on a blacklist or barred it from trading with them. He will therefore be kept informed of each operation. Clara assures Guillermo that he will encounter no trouble inside Spain, while acknowledging that a problem abroad could leave him bearing the blame. The arrangement protects Gabino’s company by making Guillermo the more exposed participant; Clara also promises that he would not be imprisoned or extradited to an enemy country, although he would have to give up his job at La Meridiana. She offers substantial wealth as a reward for cooperation.

The agency’s involvement is not unlimited. When Guillermo later plans how to receive shipments, he tells an Austrian contact that he can create a different customer number and set of initials for each consignment, or reuse them depending on the risks. He can arrange the customer identification, but cannot guarantee the complicity of the rest of the staff. A warehouse manager assigns cargo to couriers, and it would be conspicuous—and potentially counterproductive—for Gabino to intervene personally. The distinction matters: Gabino’s consent opens a channel, but the business’s ordinary procedures create both cover and exposure.

Business Discretion and Character

When Guillermo tells Gabino that an important matter connected to Clara will prevent him from returning to work after lunch, Gabino waves away the request and tells him to do what he must. Guillermo takes the permission as a blessing. The narration also gives the gesture a sharper edge: Gabino is so intent on appearing to know everything he cannot know that vanity prevents him from asking too much about Guillermo’s affairs. His noninterference is useful, but it is not presented as uncomplicated courage or full knowledge. It allows business to continue without forcing the employer to acknowledge the details of the clandestine work.

That mixture of access and distance defines Gabino’s function in the network. Clara relies on his loyalty, but also takes pains to prevent his agency from being visibly implicated. The same commercial structure that makes La Meridiana valuable—its ability to identify customers, receive goods, and send cargo onward—means that each step depends on workers and routines beyond Gabino’s personal reach. He is not shown directing couriers or assigning shipments; his importance lies in enabling the arrangement while preserving plausible separation from its riskiest acts.

Narrative Role and Limits

Gabino is a bridge between Clara’s old political friendships and Guillermo’s practical work at La Meridiana. His remembered camaraderie with Clara makes the agency available; his business interests set the terms under which it can be used. The novel thus gives his loyalty a material dimension. Protecting a former comrade does not mean exposing the company without limit, and the solution transfers much of the danger to Guillermo while promising that Gabino will be informed.

The narrative also makes clear how little can be inferred from Gabino’s apparent cooperation. At their first meeting he is described as a trusted, loyal comrade of Clara, and later as someone unlikely to ask about an innocuous box of chocolates but willing to provide whatever information she needs. Yet the account of the shipment plan stresses that he cannot control the warehouse staff without drawing attention. Gabino’s usefulness therefore rests on selective knowledge, discretion, and the boundaries of his authority—not on command over every part of the operation.