Beatriz Aguilar—Señor Aguilar

Beatriz Aguilar’s relationship with her father, Señor Aguilar, shifts from parental opposition and conflict to a guarded acceptance of her marriage to Daniel Sempere. The turning point is not an easy reconciliation: after Beatriz leaves home, her father searches for her, reacts angrily to her relationship with Daniel, and learns that she is pregnant. By the time of the wedding, however, he has given her hand to Daniel and entrusted her care to him, expressing a late, restrained tenderness through a gold tiepin inherited from his own father.

Family Bond and Conflict

Señor Aguilar’s concern for Beatriz is evident in the urgency with which her family responds when she disappears. She has been away for two days, and her parents have been looking for her desperately, with the police also searching. The account establishes that the rupture reaches beyond a lovers’ quarrel: Beatriz has left the family home, and her whereabouts have become an immediate source of alarm.

The precipitating confrontation follows Beatriz’s return after seeing Daniel. Her father is waiting for her and strikes her; she refuses to disclose Daniel’s name. The violence makes plain the force of his opposition, while her refusal shows that she is protecting Daniel even as the conflict with her family intensifies. The relationship is therefore marked by both paternal authority and Beatriz’s independent loyalty to the man she loves.

The Pregnancy and Its Consequences

The family takes Beatriz to a doctor the day after she returns. When Daniel asks what is wrong, her brother Tomás tells him that she is pregnant and blames him for her condition. The news reaches Daniel as an abrupt revelation rather than as a conversation with Beatriz or her father. Señor Aguilar’s response is conveyed through the reported assault and the family’s actions; the available account does not record a direct exchange between father and daughter about the pregnancy.

The pregnancy deepens the stakes of the family conflict and shapes its eventual resolution. By the time Beatriz’s father consents to the marriage, he understands that a child will soon call Daniel father. His acceptance is not presented as a sudden change in temperament: he continues to speak to Daniel only in monosyllables, and his manner remains difficult. Yet he no longer tries to prevent the marriage. The prospect of becoming a grandfather, together with Beatriz’s absence from home, appears in the account as part of the changed circumstances to which he has resigned himself.

From Opposition to Consent

Three months after the events that lead to the revelation of the pregnancy, Beatriz and Daniel marry at the Church of Santa Ana. Her father has given her hand to Daniel, described as doing so in view of the impossibility of obtaining Daniel’s head on a platter. The wry phrasing preserves the memory of his anger even as it marks a decisive change: he accepts the marriage, though not with uncomplicated warmth.

A week before the ceremony, Señor Aguilar goes to the bookshop and presents Daniel with a gold tiepin that belonged to his own father. The object makes his consent tangible. Rather than offering a long apology or an affectionate declaration, he passes on an heirloom and asks Daniel to take care of Beatriz. His gesture turns a family possession into a sign of trust, linking his own lineage to the family Beatriz and Daniel are about to form.

A Guarded Reconciliation

Señor Aguilar tells Daniel that Beatriz is the only good thing he has ever done in his life and asks him to look after her. The remark expresses paternal love while acknowledging a sense of personal failure; his concern is directed toward Beatriz’s future, even as he hands responsibility to her husband. Daniel’s father recognizes the significance of the moment, telling Daniel that Señor Aguilar is not a bad person and that people love in their own way. That observation frames the tiepin and the request as forms of affection that remain awkward and understated rather than absent.

The relationship’s ending is consequently an accommodation, not a complete erasure of conflict. Señor Aguilar remains monosyllabic with Daniel, but he attends to the marriage’s consequences, accepts Daniel as Beatriz’s husband, and gives him a treasured family object. His movement from searching for Beatriz and opposing the relationship to consenting to the wedding gives the bond its defining arc: love persists beneath anger, and is finally communicated through a limited but consequential act of trust.