Daniel and Bea Marry

Daniel and Bea marry in the Church of Santa Ana three months after Daniel is shot and nearly dies. Their wedding turns a relationship tested by danger and family opposition into a shared future: Bea is pregnant, her father gives his consent reluctantly, and Fermín Romero de Torres takes charge of making sure the ceremony happens. The event closes the novel’s central sequence of violence with an intimate promise, while leaving its characters’ grief and history present in the background.

Causes and Background

The wedding follows Daniel’s recovery from a bullet wound that brought him close to death. His doctor doubts he can remain on his feet for more than half an hour and warns that the bustle of a wedding is not good medicine for someone recently in danger of losing his life. Daniel replies that he will not have to do anything, a reassurance made accurate by Fermín’s decision to manage the ceremony and everything surrounding it.

Bea’s pregnancy is the immediate obstacle to the wedding. When the parish priest learns that she will arrive at the altar pregnant, he refuses to perform the ceremony. The refusal threatens to turn the couple’s marriage into a fresh confrontation with institutional disapproval, even as Daniel is still recovering and the preparations are already under way.

Arranging the Ceremony

Fermín has appointed himself absolute dictator of the ceremony, the banquet, and related arrangements. Faced with the priest’s refusal, he confronts him and insists that he is unworthy of his parish and his office. His threats to raise a scandal in the bishopric draw applause from passers-by; a flower seller in the square gives him a white carnation, which he wears until its petals become the color of his shirt collar. The small public gesture accompanies Fermín’s practical success in turning an impasse into a wedding day.

With the original priest gone, Fermín goes to San Gabriel's School and recruits Father Fernando Ramos. Ramos has never conducted a wedding; his specialties are Latin, trigonometry, and gymnastics. Fermín persuades him by presenting Daniel as too frail to withstand another disappointment and appealing to the priest’s religious standing. Ramos agrees, and the ceremony can proceed.

Family Consent and the Wedding

Bea’s father, Señor Aguilar, gives Daniel his daughter’s hand because, as the narration puts it, obtaining Daniel’s head on a platter has become impossible. The joke captures the distance still between the men: Aguilar continues to speak to Daniel in monosyllables and appears resigned rather than reconciled. Bea’s disappearance has, however, brought his anger to an end. He now faces the prospect of a grandson who will call Daniel Dad, and the fact that his daughter has chosen a life he cannot control.

A week before the wedding, Aguilar comes to the bookshop to give Daniel a gold tiepin that belonged to his own father and to shake his hand. The gift makes his change in conduct concrete without erasing his reserve. He tells Daniel to take care of Bea, expressing his concern for his daughter in a brief request rather than a declaration of affection or approval.

On the March morning of the ceremony, Bea wears an ivory-white dress. Daniel remembers little of the priest’s words or of the hopeful guests filling the church; what remains with him is the touch of Bea’s lips and a secret oath that he carries in memory for the rest of his life. The scene’s lasting image is therefore not the formal proceedings but the private pledge lodged within them.

Consequences and Significance

The marriage establishes Daniel and Bea as a family just as they are expecting a child. It also completes a gradual, incomplete shift in Bea’s father: he consents, offers an inherited keepsake, and shakes Daniel’s hand, but remains emotionally sparing. His blessing is practical and guarded, shaped by the knowledge that he cannot undo his daughter’s choice.

Fermín’s intervention makes the wedding possible, converting the priest’s refusal into a detour rather than a defeat. The couple’s union follows Daniel’s near-death and Bea’s disappearance, so the ceremony carries the weight of survival as well as romance. Its remembered oath also links the public ritual to the private act of commitment: what endures for Daniel is not the wording of the service, but the promise he makes and remembers.