The Anti-Alvar Campaign and the Director’s Resignation bring a challenge to Samuel Alvar’s authority into the open, turning complaints about the hospital into a struggle over Alice Gould’s liberty and the facts surrounding El Gnomo’s death. The doctors’ meeting produces a proposed resignation, but its sharpest confrontation is over whether Alice should be branded a murderer when the evidence cited in the room points to a different account.

Building the Campaign

Alice Gould spends much of an afternoon conspiring with Rosellini. Their initial plan is to let it appear that she is being treated directly by the head of the unit until César Arellano returns. In parallel, a lawyer chosen by Alice is to be allowed discreet access to Rosellini’s office and to handle the legal steps for locating Heliodoro Almenara. The plan invokes paragraph b of Article 27 of the decree, although the surviving account breaks off before explaining the provision’s full application. This legal maneuver sits alongside the campaign against Alvar: Alice is not only contesting her confinement through formal procedures but helping to prepare a challenge to the director’s position.

The case against Alvar is framed in institutional as well as personal terms. The effort seeks the doctors’ unanimous support for asking the Ministry of Health to transfer him. Alice points to suicides, escapes, drowned patients, and killings, as well as bars that have not been replaced with suitable windows. She also objects to being treated for an illness that, she says, no one has diagnosed. The list makes the campaign an indictment of the hospital’s safety and management, while her own confinement gives that indictment an immediate personal stake.

Alvar’s Proposed Resignation

Addressing the doctors, Alvar acknowledges that a damaging document about him is circulating through the hospital. He objects both to its accusations and to its authorship: he says it was written by a patient and signed by physicians. Rather than simply answer the document, he asks the doctors to accept a transaction. They would replace the appeal to the Minister of Health with another document, drafted and signed by Alvar, in which he submits his resignation and asks for the former arrangement to be restored: the hospital’s doctors’ board would suggest a director for the minister to appoint.

The offer makes the meeting about more than whether Alvar remains in office. His departure is presented together with a proposed change to how future directors are selected. Yet the resignation does not settle the dispute that matters most to Alice. In the ensuing exchange, Arellano distinguishes Alvar’s personal decision to seek a transfer from the accusation he has made against a resident. The first, Arellano says, is not the decisive issue; leaving the charge of murder unresolved could affect whether Alice remains unlawfully confined or is released.

The Dispute over El Gnomo’s Death

Alvar answers by accusing Alice of killing Celestino Expósito, a disabled resident whom he says she contemptuously called El Gnomo. Arellano does not endorse the charge. He calls Alvar’s account inaccurate and says he will rely on Alvar’s own statement to the court, a copy of which he possesses and can produce for the doctors. He also invokes the testimony of the sole eyewitness, Cosme el Hortelano.

As Arellano recounts that testimony, El Gnomo was in the habit of running wildly in zigzags. On the occasion in question, he tripped during one of these runs and broke his malformed spine against a rock. Arellano offers to have Cosme called to repeat what he told the judge. The contrast is precise: Alvar states that Alice murdered El Gnomo; Arellano points to a judicial statement and eyewitness testimony describing a fatal accident. The meeting does not present the accusation as established fact, and Arellano’s intervention warns that repeating it may prolong Alice’s confinement.

Departure and Aftermath

After declaring that he will not professionally commit himself to releasing a madwoman, Alvar walks toward the chapter-room door. His exit takes place in an impressive, uncomfortable silence. Teodoro Ruipérez, whom the account identifies as Alvar’s protégé, does not follow him. That detail leaves the director’s departure without the visible solidarity of his closest professional ally, even as the passage supplies no further account of the resignation’s formal processing.

The episode’s outcome is therefore both institutional and unresolved. Alvar’s proposed resignation offers a route away from the direct contest over the petition, but the meeting exposes the continuing consequences of his accusation: Alice’s freedom may depend on whether her sanity is confirmed and whether the charge against her is accepted or rejected. By placing a disputed death, a court statement, and a witness’s account at the center of a dispute over authority, the campaign makes the director’s judgment itself part of the case against him.