Francisco Javier Fumero's obsession with Penelope Aldaya

Francisco Javier Fumero’s fixation on Penelope Aldaya grows from a furtive glimpse into a private obsession, expressed through watching, collecting an image, and carving her likeness. It culminates in his attempt to shoot Julian Carax after seeing him kiss Penelope: the violence exposes how completely Fumero’s silent fascination has become entangled with the couple’s intimacy, even though the evidence does not establish that he acted from a conscious romantic claim on Penelope.

The First Sighting

Months before Julian begins at San Gabriel’s School, Fumero is gathering dead leaves in the fountain courtyard when Don Ricardo Aldaya arrives in his luxurious car with Penelope and her governess, Jacinta. Penelope steps out, waves her parasol, and splashes the pond water. Fumero watches as if afraid that blinking will make the vision vanish. When she looks in his direction and seems to smile, he flees to his hiding place atop the school’s water tower, beside the dovecote. There he takes out his carving tools and begins making a likeness of the face he has just seen.

The scene establishes the pattern that defines his attachment: Penelope is first an image glimpsed from a distance, while Fumero remains hidden, watching rather than approaching. He returns home hours late, where his furious mother waits for him. He lowers his eyes, afraid she will read his thoughts and see the girl from the pond in them. His response makes the sight private and secret before it becomes connected to any relationship with Penelope herself.

Watching the Couple

As Penelope and Julian grow close, Jacinta notices Fumero spying on them. She catches him reading their gestures from afar and watching Penelope with an intensity she finds disturbing. His attention is therefore not limited to the original glimpse: it follows the developing intimacy between the two young people, whose private exchanges he observes without being invited into them.

Fumero’s fixation leaves tangible traces. Jacinta keeps a photograph of Julian and Penelope, taken by the Aldayas’ official photographer in the presence of Don Ricardo and Sophie Carax. She carries it with her. One day, after leaving her bag beside a school fountain while waiting for Jorge, she finds Fumero prowling nearby and looking nervous. That night the photograph is missing, and Jacinta becomes certain that he stole it. The account presents her conclusion as certainty on her part, while making the photograph’s disappearance a concrete extension of the boy’s clandestine watching.

On another occasion, Fumero approaches Jacinta and asks her to give Penelope something. What he produces is a figure carved from pinewood, wrapped in cloth. Jacinta recognizes Penelope in the carving and shivers. Before she can answer, Fumero leaves. On the way back to the house on Avenida del Tibidabo, Jacinta throws the figure from the car window as though discarding something repellent. His attempt to send the likeness to Penelope is the closest the evidence shows him coming to direct contact with her, and it is mediated through Jacinta rather than offered face to face.

Jacinta’s unease persists beyond these encounters. More than once she wakes at dawn, sweating after nightmares in which Fumero throws himself upon Penelope with the cold, indifferent brutality of an insect. These are Jacinta’s nightmares, not an account of an actual assault; they register the menace she associates with the boy’s gaze and carved image. The contrast between a crafted likeness and her imagined violence gives the fixation a threatening cast without turning her dream into a fact about what Fumero has done.

From Surveillance to Gunfire

Fumero’s fixation becomes bound to the couple’s visible intimacy at a moment of humiliation for him and his mother. After a misunderstanding over an invitation, the servants at the Aldaya house order them to leave. From her bedroom window, Jacinta watches Fumero turn to go, then stop: he has seen Julian kissing Penelope by the library’s large window. The pair kiss with absorbed intensity, unaware of the world around them. Fumero sees the scene from outside their intimacy, as he had watched Penelope at the fountain and later watched the couple at school.

The following day at midday break, Fumero appears carrying his father’s gun. Pupils laugh and question him about the little sailor suit associated with the previous day’s incident; their laughter stops when they see the weapon, and many move away. The circle containing Jorge Aldaya, Miquel Moliner, Fernando Ramos, and Julian turns to face him, not understanding what is happening. Fumero raises the rifle and fires without warning. Witnesses later describe his expression as neither irritated nor angry, comparing its automatic composure to the manner in which he did garden-cleaning work.

The first bullet passes close to Julian’s head. The second would have gone through his throat if Miquel had not thrown himself at Fumero, punched him, and wrenched away the gun. Julian watches, astonished and paralyzed. The other pupils assume the shots are aimed at Jorge, as revenge for the humiliation Fumero and his mother suffered the previous day. Only after the Civil Guards take Fumero away does Miquel tell Julian, without pride, that he has saved his life. The immediate target remains subject to the distinction between the crowd’s mistaken assumption and the later disclosure: the shooting nearly kills Julian, and Miquel understands that he has intervened to save him.

Meaning and Limits of the Evidence

The episodes form an escalation in images and actions: Fumero sees Penelope at the pond, carves her face, watches her with Julian, apparently takes a photograph of them, and finally sees their kiss before opening fire. The sequence makes his attention feel increasingly possessive and dangerous. Yet it does not supply a confession or explain his inner reasoning at the moment of the shooting. The boys initially attribute the attack to revenge against Jorge; the narrative places that assumption beside the earlier signs of Fumero’s fixation and the fact that Julian is the one nearly killed.

The evidence also distinguishes Fumero’s imagined Penelope from Penelope as a person. His earliest encounter is an act of looking from concealment; his later gift is a carved image delivered through Jacinta, who rejects it, while Penelope herself is shown in the mutual intimacy she shares with Julian. The relationship is therefore defined less by reciprocal interaction than by distance, observation, and representation. Its decisive consequence is not a romance but an eruption of violence that changes the schoolyard encounter into the moment Miquel saves Julian’s life.