Feimin Romero de Torres and Fumero's adversarial relationship

Fermín Romero de Torres’s hostility toward Inspector Fumero is a struggle between a persecuted man who refuses to yield and a state officer who turns personal pursuit into public terror. Their confrontation on a Barcelona street makes that imbalance physical: Fumero arrives with two agents, taunts Fermín about his past, and beats him while Daniel Sempere is held helplessly nearby.

A Pursuit Rooted in the Past

Fumero intercepts Fermín and Daniel as they are heading toward a tavern. Two men position themselves behind the pair, seize them by the neck, and hold their wrists; the third, smaller figure blocks their way. Fumero wears his familiar raincoat and greets Fermín as an old acquaintance, presenting the ambush as a continuation of a pursuit that Fermín had hoped was over.

The inspector makes clear that he has not lost track of Fermín. He denounces his attempt to pass as a respectable citizen and accuses him of meddling in matters that do not concern him, including inquiries connected with the Hospice of Santa Lucia and its nuns. His questions are not an effort to discover the truth so much as a means of degrading and intimidating his target. Fumero also invokes his power to take Fermín to headquarters and subject him again to torture with a welding torch, making the threat of renewed abuse part of their history.

Insult, Defiance, and Retaliation

Fermín answers Fumero’s insinuations with a cutting joke about the inspector’s sexual conduct, telling him that respecting other people’s bodies might spare him both penicillin and trouble with his bowels. The exchange briefly reverses the direction of humiliation: Fumero laughs, but the laugh is edged with anger, and he demands to know what name Fermín is using now. He offers to let the pair go with a warning if Fermín explains why they have come to the Hospice of Santa Lucia. Fermín gives only a restrained answer—that they are visiting a relative—while Fumero turns the interrogation into a threat, saying Fermín’s refusal to cooperate will mean another beating, this time inflicted on Daniel, whom he mocks as Fermín’s young sponsor.

Violence, Warning, and Daniel’s Witness

When Fumero threatens Daniel, Fermín begins to protest that the inspector must not touch him. Fumero answers with mockery, but Fermín turns the exchange back against him, taunting him about the sailor-boy trousers his mother supposedly made him wear and then invoking his mother’s name and social standing. The insults strike a personal nerve: Fumero’s face pales, and its expression empties. Their hostility is not confined to Fermín’s resistance to police power; it also draws force from the humiliations and vulnerabilities that Fumero guards behind his authority.

Fumero’s reply is immediate and bodily. One punch knocks Fermín into a puddle; then the inspector kicks him in the stomach, kidneys, and face while the two agents hold Daniel fast and laugh. Daniel recognizes one of them as the raincoated man who had previously watched them at a bar in Plaza de Sarria and followed them on a bus, revealing that the surveillance preceded this street attack. The agents’ grip makes Daniel a witness without giving him the power to intervene. He struggles, but cannot get free.

As Fumero continues kicking Fermín, he declares that what angers him most is anyone stirring up the past, insisting that the past must be left alone. The command gives the beating a purpose beyond punishment: Fumero is trying to stop the inquiries that bring Fermín and Daniel to the Hospice of Santa Lucia, and he couples that prohibition with a direct warning that Daniel will be next. He then urinates on Fermín, reducing the attack to a further act of deliberate degradation. When he approaches Daniel afterward, sweaty and panting, an agent hands him a handkerchief; Fumero wipes his face and neck before telling Daniel that Fermín was beaten for backing the wrong side and that the next, worse assault will be Daniel’s fault.

Memory, Loyalty, and the Cost of Witness

The beating leaves Daniel with a second injury that is not visible in the street. He remembers the blows landing on Fermín and the helplessness of being pinned by the agents; the memory continues to hurt him because he did nothing but tremble and cry silently. His shame is sharpened by knowing that Fermín had been trying, as usual, to protect him. When Fumero comes close, Daniel expects to be struck and even welcomes the prospect, hoping that a blow might answer the guilt he feels. Instead, the inspector merely pats his cheek, making the gesture another expression of control: Daniel is left with his fear and complicity rather than the release of retaliation.

The encounter defines the hostility between Fermín and Fumero as a conflict sustained by both political coercion and personal defiance. Fumero can summon agents, restrain witnesses, threaten torture, and dictate what may be remembered; Fermín has little physical power against him, yet refuses to surrender his wit or his loyalty to Daniel. That imbalance makes the inspector’s warning about the past more than a private threat. His violence enforces silence, while Fermín’s resistance—and Daniel’s painful recollection of it—keeps the suppressed history present.