Fumero Registers Miquel's Body as Julian

Fumero’s registration of Miquel Moliner’s body as Julian Carax turns a wartime death into an instrument of concealment. By confirming a false identity and ordering the body buried in a common grave, the inspector helps make Julian officially nonexistent and obscures his own pursuit of him.

The Morgue’s Earlier Irregularity

An earlier account of the supposed death of Julian establishes how police power had already corrupted the morgue’s procedures. In September 1936, a body arrived bearing a book and a passport identifying the dead man as Julian Fortuny Carax, born in Barcelona in 1900. The passport indicated that Carax had crossed into the country a month earlier, and the reported cause of death was a gunshot wound. Antoni Fortuny, Carax’s father, was summoned to identify the body.

A third policeman, who had entered without drawing attention, remained after Fortuny left. He approached the body, spat on it, kept the passport, and ordered the corpse sent to Montjuïc for burial in a common grave. When the morgue employee protested that the rules required an identification, the officer threatened him. He declared that the dead man was whoever he said he was, signed the registration form, and closed the case. The same signature later appeared on numerous death certificates for unidentified bodies, showing that this was not an isolated breach but part of a wider pattern of falsified records.

Miquel’s Death and the False Identification

The later account reveals that Miquel died while Julian escaped. An unidentified van removed the bodies of two dead policemen, and the bar manager was warned not to discuss what had happened. Twelve hours later, Miquel’s body was left in an alley in the Raval quarter, separating his death from the officers’ deaths. When it reached the morgue, it had been dead for two days. Miquel had left his own papers at home; the documents found with the body were a disfigured passport in Julian’s name and a copy of The Shadow of the Wind.

The police therefore concluded that the dead man was Julian Carax. Fumero went to the morgue after hearing the news, where Antoni Fortuny had been brought to identify the corpse. Fortuny had not seen Julian for two days and feared the worst. He recognized the body as the man who had visited him a week earlier asking after Julian, but the police mistook his reaction for confirmation that the corpse was Julian. Fumero inspected the body in silence, recognized Miquel, and nevertheless signed the forensic report identifying him as Carax. He then ordered the body taken immediately to a common grave in Montjuïc.

Motive and Consequences

Miquel’s death under Julian’s name gave Fumero an unintended advantage. With the official record declaring Julian dead, there could be no formal link between Fumero and the man he still hoped to find and kill. Wartime disorder made explanations unlikely, while the nameless grave ensured that the false identification would be difficult to challenge. Julian was left without an official identity, reduced in the record to a shadow.

The consequences extended beyond the morgue. Daniel, waiting in the apartment for Miquel or Julian, spent two days believing that something had gone terribly wrong. A morgue employee eventually contacted the publishers after comparing the passport with the book found on the body and suspecting police irregularities. The discrepancy between the official paperwork and the evidence carried with the corpse allowed the truth to surface, but it did not undo the burial or restore Miquel’s identity in the state record.

The Record as an Instrument of Power

The false registration repeats the earlier morgue incident: in both cases, a policeman overrides identification rules, signs the paperwork, and sends a body to a common grave. The repeated procedure connects one fabricated death to a larger system in which official records can erase the dead rather than establish who they were. Fumero’s signature does not merely misname Miquel; it helps create the public reality that Julian is dead, protecting the inspector’s actions while leaving the surviving Julian exposed and officially untraceable.