José Antonio reunites with his father during his illness in an encounter that makes care a form of belated fatherhood. In 1952, Guillermo García Medina—living under the name Rafa—returns to the life of the son he has long been separated from, first as a doctor summoned by Amparo and then as a daily presence beside José Antonio’s bed. Their connection grows through treatment, books, and chess, but remains constrained by concealed parentage and the expectation that the father will have to leave again.

Identity and circumstances

By the time José Antonio becomes seriously ill, he has been raised under another identity. Amparo has given him the name José Antonio Urbieta, with Urbieta chosen at random from a street directory; the household’s portrait of a young Falangist presents a supposed father who died in Russia. The family papers support that story, while the real father remains absent. Guillermo, meanwhile, has lived for years with the memory of a son from whom he was separated. Finding the documents he had hidden—including the family record, the child’s birth certificate, and his and Amparo’s wedding photograph—had already restored the fact of that lost family to him, but not the relationship itself.

Illness and return to daily care

In October 1952, Amparo comes to Guillermo’s office in alarm: her fourteen-year-old son has a fever, cannot eat or stand, and complains of pain throughout his body, including his heart. The illness has left him weak, though his appearance does not make its seriousness immediately obvious. Guillermo examines him and recognizes rheumatic fever, drawing on a similar case he had treated and the further study it required. He is careful to explain that the condition is unusual and uncertain in origin, and not proof that Amparo failed to care for her son.

A pediatrician confirms the diagnosis and identifies inflammation of the pericardium. José Antonio must remain in bed, avoid exertion and distress, and eat regularly while the inflammation subsides. The doctor expects him to recover without lasting effects if these instructions are followed. From 22 October 1952 until mid-January 1953, Guillermo visits him after work every afternoon, examining him and keeping observations in a notebook. At first Amparo stays close, watchful; as her son improves, she leaves them more time alone.

Books and chess as a father-son bond

Their visits begin with medical conversation and develop into shared reading. Guillermo reads aloud from Trafalgar, answering José Antonio’s questions and then, at the boy’s request, staying long enough to finish whole chapters. José Antonio starts rereading the passages on his own in the mornings. For Guillermo, the novel becomes a private island they inhabit together: a bond more powerful than the illness itself, and a route back to a son he had nearly given up recovering.

Chess gives that connection a form that can be handed down. Guillermo teaches José Antonio on Don Fermín’s old board, which Amparo had stored away. Although she had shown him how the pieces moved, she had not taught him how the game worked. Guillermo explains openings and the consequences of moving pawns without a plan; José Antonio quickly grasps the choices before him. A notebook of elementary problems gives him something to practice while still in bed, and before Christmas, once he can sit in an armchair, the two begin playing full games. Amparo resents the new enthusiasm, but the game becomes their shared inheritance: Guillermo remembers that his own grandfather taught him to play, and believes chess will be what his son retains of him.

The final visit and parting gift

When José Antonio is well enough to return to school, Amparo tells Guillermo that his daily visits are no longer necessary. He agrees and offers to come less often while the boy fully recovers, avoiding the argument she had expected. She accuses him of having taught José Antonio chess so that he could leave them in peace. Guillermo answers that the books would eventually be forgotten, but José Antonio would remember who taught him the game. He makes one last visit after the boy is discharged, already understanding that he is about to lose him again.

On 22 January 1953, Guillermo deliberately loses a chess game for the first time in his life—not on the board, where he wins all three quick games they play, but through the departure that follows. He gives José Antonio his grandfather’s chess clock, a cherrywood box with Roman-numeral dials and brass push-buttons, explaining how it is used. The gift is the last truly valuable object he has kept from the trunk Experta filled with possessions from the commissioner Medina’s home in April 1939. José Antonio does not know its full history; Guillermo gives it to him because he wants his son to have something of his.

The boy asks for another game, and Guillermo promises he will visit from time to time, although he knows he may not. At home, he takes his younger son Manuel in his arms, while Rita watches him closely. The contrast makes the loss plain: one child is present in his daily life, while the older son has been returned to him only briefly. The clock, like the lessons, stands in for a relationship that the circumstances still prevent him from openly claiming.

Recognition delayed

Years later, José Antonio pieces together the truth from the documents Amparo kept hidden. In 1958, short of money, he searches her underwear drawer and finds his birth certificate, a Republican family record, and evidence of a past she had concealed. He recognizes the doctor who visited throughout his illness and taught him chess in a photograph with his pregnant mother. Experta has also told him that Guillermo was his father, that he and Amparo lived together until 1939, and that Guillermo had buried his great-grandfather and hidden Amparo during the war. José Antonio’s recognition comes after the intimacy of the bedside visits, not before them: he has already known his father through the repeated acts of reading, examination, and play.

Their eventual embrace at Barajas on 30 December 1976 gives the reunion a later, fuller frame. Both men have grown old, both have lived under names other than their own, and both have families whose children do not bear their fathers’ surnames. Guillermo’s hands once stitched the wounds on José Antonio’s body; now the two men acknowledge a reciprocal debt of lives saved. Their embrace briefly restores the strength and hope that had once joined them, even as they recognize their shared defeat. The illness episode is therefore both a reunion and a postponement: father and son find one another in care, lose their everyday closeness again, and reach an explicit recognition only years later.