Javier Fumero—Nuria Monfort

Javier Fumero and Nuria Monfort are bound by a sustained contest of pursuit and resistance. Fumero watches her because he expects she will eventually lead him to Julian Carax; Nuria understands that his surveillance is part of a deliberate campaign of vengeance, and that she has little strength or means left to oppose him. Their relationship makes the private history of Julian’s disappearance inseparable from the public violence and enforced silence surrounding the war and its aftermath.

Surveillance and pursuit

Nuria’s account places Fumero’s watch over her within a broader landscape of wartime destruction. Barcelona has endured years of conflict, deprivation, and violence; as the fighting ends, the city faces further bloodshed and a deepening collective silence. In that atmosphere, Fumero’s pursuit is not an isolated threat but part of a world in which violence continues under new allegiances, while people who witnessed events are pressured to forget or remain silent.

Fumero is focused on finding Julian, and he understands that Nuria’s connection to him makes her a route to her husband. Nuria says he has watched her for a long time, waiting for her to weaken. She believes he is patient because vengeance sustains him, and that he expects her and Daniel’s friends to lead him to Julian. Her fear is therefore not only of an eventual confrontation: she knows that her movements and relationships have become part of Fumero’s pursuit.

Interrogation and intimidation

When police take Nuria to headquarters to question her about the death of the publisher Sanmarti, Fumero arrives after she has waited for five hours in a dark office. He offers her a cigarette and speaks as though friendship were possible, while asking whether her husband is at home. Nuria replies that her husband has left and that she does not know where he is. The exchange exposes the unequal terms of their encounter: Fumero uses a show of civility to open the interrogation, but the question is a means of locating Julian.

Fumero then threatens to find Julian and kill both him and Nuria. He makes clear that he intends to kill Nuria first, so that Julian will see what has happened to her. He also threatens to reveal that the woman Julian had sent to her death was his sister. Nuria answers with a defiant prediction that Fumero will die first. After he leaves, the police keep her in the room for six hours without water. His threats and detention convert the inquiry about Sanmarti’s death into an act of coercion aimed at extracting information about Julian.

Ransacked home and lost refuge

Nuria returns home at night to find that Fumero’s men have searched the apartment. Furniture has fallen, drawers and bookshelves have been emptied onto the floor, her clothes have been torn, and Miquel’s books have been destroyed. The deliberate damage reaches beyond the search for information: the destruction of the books and the desecration of the home turn Fumero’s threat into an assault on the life Nuria has tried to maintain.

She then makes her way to the apartment in Ronda de San Antonio, taking detours to make sure she has not been followed. The front door is still locked, but Julian is gone. Nuria waits through the night and, by morning, understands that he will not return and that she has lost him. Fumero’s pressure thus coincides with the collapse of her remaining refuge and her separation from Julian; the account establishes the loss and her conviction that it is permanent, without presenting it as a confirmed killing by Fumero.

Memoir, memory, and the anticipated ending

Nuria expects that Fumero will eventually kill her. She says that he has watched her for years and is waiting for the moment to deliver a final blow; she also recognizes that she has run out of strength and resources. The relationship is therefore marked by an outcome she anticipates but cannot prevent. Her knowledge of the danger shapes what she does with her story: she gives her pages to her father and asks him to make sure they reach Daniel if anything happens to her.

The memoir becomes Nuria’s answer to the silence that Fumero’s campaign helps enforce. She hopes Daniel will read it, understand its history, and set it free, even as she fears that the pages will reach him only after she can no longer say goodbye. Her request that he remember her joins personal testimony to a larger warning about war: violence leaves survivors with memories that others may try to dismiss or erase. Fumero’s threat is thus not only against Nuria’s life; it places her account itself at risk, while her decision to entrust it to Daniel offers a way for what she witnessed to survive.