General Workers' Union

The General Workers' Union is referenced through the political identities assigned to characters, making union membership both a biographical marker and a potential danger under changing regimes. The novel gives no account of the union’s internal organization or independent activities; instead, it shows how a UGT affiliation could be written into a state document, then destroyed or replaced as a means of survival.

Membership as a biographical marker

In June 1937, Manuel Arroyo Benítez arrived in Madrid under papers identifying him as Rafael Cuesta Sánchez, a fictitious government employee. That invented biography included membership in the UGT from 1929, alongside other fabricated details: a birthplace in Talavera de la Reina, a marriage, and residence in Valencia. The union affiliation was therefore one component of a complete administrative identity, not evidence of actual membership by Arroyo.

The affiliation erased

Later, as the Republican government’s defeat became imminent, Arroyo gave Guillermo García Medina a new identity using the name Rafael Cuesta Sánchez. This version of the identity was tailored to Guillermo: he was to be presented as unmarried, politically unaffiliated, and resident in Madrid. Arroyo had personally destroyed the UGT membership card associated with his earlier use of the name. The detail makes the union affiliation a removable element of an assumed biography, while the forged identity papers themselves offered Guillermo a route to evade scrutiny.

Political exposure under the victors

Arroyo warned that Guillermo’s real work as a doctor—including his blood-transfusion service and his aid to a Republican agent—could furnish a Francoist prosecutor with grounds to seek a death sentence. In that context, suppressing the UGT record was part of a broader effort to keep Guillermo from being identified with the defeated Republican side. When Guillermo later presented the document at a Madrid police station, its appearance secured him access to the window handling exchanges of documents from the Nationalist zone. The episode shows how political affiliation and its deliberate absence could both be made consequential through official paperwork.