Daniel Senperé y Fermín Romero de Torres y Bernada

Daniel, Fermín, and Bernarda form a relationship in which affection is measured less by declarations than by care, loyalty, and the possibility of starting over. Bernarda’s presence changes the meaning of Fermín’s rescue by Daniel and his father: what begins as shelter from danger becomes a life with someone to love and a reason to keep living.

A friendship made of rescue and obligation

Daniel and Fermín’s bond grows from the moment Daniel and his father take Fermín in from the streets. Fermín later tells Daniel that they saved his life and that his life belongs to them both. He promises to do whatever he can for Daniel, describing his recruitment into the bookshop not merely as employment but as a second birth: the day Daniel got him off the streets, Fermín Romero de Torres was born again.

The language of debt is intense, but Fermín’s attachment is not simply a repayment of a favor. He has found in Daniel’s household a place where he can act for another person and be treated as a friend. When Daniel insists that Fermín is his best friend and says that anyone in his position would have done the same, he refuses to reduce their relationship to an account of guilt. Fermín, by contrast, struggles to accept that forgiveness; he asks Daniel to forgive him, suggesting that gratitude and shame remain intertwined even after rescue.

Bernarda as a reason to live

Fermín names Bernarda as the reason he has found for living once more. That declaration gives their relationship a particular weight: after describing his former self as dead and buried, and the old man within his bones as a figure who returns in nightmares, he identifies love for Bernarda with the possibility of becoming someone else. His past has not vanished, but his attachment to her gives his renewed life a direction.

The importance of Bernarda also surfaces in Fermín’s teasing attempt to draw Daniel out of his distress. He proposes taking the eighteen-year-old to a club on Calle Plateria, presenting the outing as an offer of companionship and amusement. When Daniel asks what Bernarda will say, Fermín answers that the women are for Daniel and that he will wait in the hall, reading a magazine and admiring the scene from afar. He jokes that he is a convert to monogamy, if not in his mind, then at least in practice. The joke turns Daniel’s question into evidence of Fermín’s settled allegiance: Bernarda is the person to whom he has committed himself.

Care expressed through ordinary attention

Fermín’s devotion to Bernarda is not confined to the solemn declaration that she gives him a reason to live. Daniel’s imagination of Fermín at her home is domestic and comic: he wonders whether his friend might have gone there to empty Bernarda’s larder or carry her off into the ironing room. The teasing image places Fermín within the routines of her household, where affection can take the form of food, visits, and shared space rather than grand statements.

Daniel’s search for Fermín brings this relationship into the practical texture of their friendship. After trying to reach Dona Encarna, he phones Gustavo Barceló’s home in the hope that Fermín may have turned up there. The call unexpectedly reaches Clara, and Daniel has to mention his reason for calling in a roundabout, deliberately casual way. Bernarda’s domestic world is therefore part of the network through which Daniel looks for his friend: their ties overlap, and Fermín’s private attachment is woven into the friendships and households around him.

Renewal without erasure

Fermín’s account of rebirth is not a claim that the past has been erased. He says that the man who once lived within him is dead, yet sometimes returns in nightmares. His new life contains both the burden of what came before and the relationships that make another identity possible. Daniel and his father provide the immediate conditions for that change; Bernarda gives it an intimate purpose.

Together, these bonds shift Fermín from survival toward belonging. His promise to Daniel expresses loyalty to the people who saved him, while his naming of Bernarda expresses a future he has chosen for himself. The relationship among the three is thus not a simple triangle of competing affections: Daniel is Fermín’s closest friend and benefactor, while Bernarda is his beloved and his reason for living. Their different forms of attachment converge in the same transformation, helping Fermín understand that the life rescued from the streets can become a life shared with others.