Federico Flavia e Pahuds

Don Federico Flavia i Pujades is the neighborhood watchmaker: a respected, generous presence near the Sempere bookshop whose arrest and abuse reveal how state power turns private difference into a pretext for persecution. His story moves between ordinary acts of craft and neighborly kindness, the public violence inflicted on him, and the network of personal loyalties linking him to Daniel Sempere and the Carax mystery.

Identity and Work

Don Federico is known in the neighborhood as an excellent watchmaker and a valued member of the community. When an officer invokes his name as a suspected criminal, Daniel defends him as a good person and expresses doubt that he has committed any crime. The accusation then shifts from criminality to prejudice: the officer cites Don Federico’s visits to the bookshop and insinuates that he goes there for romantic novels and pornography. Daniel asks what business this is of the officer’s. The exchange makes clear that the threat rests not on evidence of a crime but on hostility toward the life Don Federico leads.

His trade is also an ongoing service to people around him. He tells Daniel that work is plentiful because watches no longer last as they once did, and jokes that he may need to hire an assistant. He suggests Tomás Aguilar, whom he understands to be an inventor and perhaps suited to the work. Daniel recognizes that Tomás’s reactionary father would likely object to his son taking a position with Don Federico, and offers to pass the suggestion along. The conversation situates Don Federico as both a skilled tradesman and someone willing to make room for a younger person in his workshop.

Don Federico’s practical relationship with Daniel’s family is evident in a small domestic errand: he has the alarm clock Daniel’s father brought him two weeks earlier, though he doubts it is worth repairing and says a new one would be preferable. The broken clock gives their connection an everyday quality, set against the political danger that soon overtakes him.

Arrest and Abuse

Don Anacleto announces that Don Federico was arrested by the State Police during the night. His account identifies him as a beloved neighbor whose work as a watchmaker has contributed to the community’s comfort, and notes that his shop is only three doors from the Sempere bookshop. The distance matters: this is not an abstract report of repression but an assault on someone woven into the characters’ immediate neighborhood. Daniel’s heart sinks as he hears the news.

The arrest is followed by a public and devastating return. Halfway through the morning, a grey police van leaves Don Federico at his own doorstep, where the baker’s son finds him huddled and crying. His clothes and personal effects have been damaged or taken, and he has been subjected to humiliating abuse. The account makes the consequence of the officer’s earlier insinuations unmistakable: state authority has been used to punish him, not to protect the community.

The neighborhood responds with care rather than withdrawal. Fermin visits Don Federico’s home and reports that a group of local women has established a permanent guard to attend to him. A doctor has diagnosed three broken ribs, numerous bruises, and a serious injury. The watch is a practical answer to the vulnerability left by the attack: neighbors organize themselves to make sure he is not left alone. Fermin also buys him flowers, cologne, and three jars of his favorite peach juice, while the household already has medicines and ointments. These ordinary gifts restore some measure of personal regard after the attempt to strip him of dignity.

Community and Solidarity

Merceditas condemns what happened and emphasizes Don Federico’s kindness and his habit of minding his own business. She also defends his choice to dress as a Gypsy and sing in public, treating those pursuits as no justification for mistreatment. Fermin distinguishes the perpetrators’ conduct from deliberate evil, describing it instead as the unthinking aggression of people who attack those they regard as different. The conversation shifts blame away from Don Federico’s harmless self-expression and toward the prejudice that makes such expression dangerous.

The watch kept by the local women, the doctor’s care, and the presents Fermin brings form a collective response to the arrest. Don Federico is not represented only as a victim: he is a neighbor with preferences, work, relationships, and a place in the community, and people act on that knowledge. The details of his favorite drink and the proposed assistantship make the solidarity specific rather than symbolic.

Place in the Wider Story

Don Federico’s connections extend beyond Daniel’s family. In the account of Julián Carax and Jorge Aldaya’s boyhood friendship, Fermin likens their closeness to the friendship between Daniel and Tomás, bringing Don Federico into the conversation as part of the neighborhood world in which those relationships are being interpreted. His appearance belongs to the investigation’s wider pattern: private bonds and local knowledge help the characters reconstruct a history that official accounts have obscured.

A later account of the Carax mystery describes how Miquel Moliner recognized Fumero’s strategy. Miquel had learned to play chess with him at San Gabriel’s School twenty years earlier, and understood the patience behind his maneuvers. Don Federico’s persecution belongs to this same climate of surveillance and coercion, though the evidence does not make him a participant in the Carax plot itself. His experience shows what the authorities’ power means at the neighborhood level: a respected tradesman can be seized on a bigoted pretext, while the people around him must organize care in the aftermath.

Significance

Don Federico’s story is shaped by a pointed contrast between the precision of his craft and the irrationality of the violence directed at him. His watchmaking depends on attention and repair; his assailants, as Fermin observes, act without reflection and then presume themselves justified. The contrast does not turn Don Federico into an emblem detached from his life. His work, possible offer of employment to Tomás, broken clock, and favorite peach juice keep his individuality present even when the police attempt to reduce him to a target.

His ordeal also establishes the limits of safety under repression. A good reputation and a quiet life do not protect him from arrest, but neither does the attack erase his standing among his neighbors. The women’s guard, the doctor’s treatment, and Fermin’s small gifts create a counter-network of attention and practical care. Through Don Federico, the novel sets official power against a local community that recognizes him not by the accusations made against him, but by the person they know.