Fermín Romero de Torres's homelessness

Fermín Romero de Torres’s homelessness places him at the social margins of postwar Barcelona, where he survives beneath the arches and remains exposed to hunger, poverty, and police pursuit. It is also the circumstance through which Daniel Sempere encounters him: Daniel finds a resourceful, talkative man in need of help, and brings him toward a home and a job that offer an alternative to life on the street.

Life beneath the arches

The first meeting comes after Daniel has been thrown out into a rainy night. The beggar he had earlier refused to help sees him injured and asks whether he is all right. Rather than leave him exposed to the weather, he leads Daniel beneath the arches, where he keeps a bundle of possessions and a bag of old clothes. He offers wine to warm Daniel and tend to his wound. The exchange turns Daniel’s earlier refusal into a direct encounter with the poverty he had passed by: the man who has little to offer nevertheless offers what he can.

The beggar introduces himself as Fermín Romero de Torres, currently unemployed. The contrast between his formal self-presentation and his circumstances is immediate. He lives under the arches, has a bundle of belongings rather than a settled home, and offers Daniel wine from the scant resources he has. Their meeting establishes a relationship not through charity at a distance but through shared vulnerability: Daniel is hurt and disoriented; Fermín is homeless, yet acts as his guide and host.

Precarity and ingenuity

When Daniel later returns to find Fermín, he discovers him in his usual lodging beneath the arches of Calle Fernando. Fermín is assembling the front page of a Monday newspaper from fragments rescued from a rubbish bin. Even this makeshift activity carries a pointed social edge: the scraps he salvages report on the supposed achievements of the dictatorship’s public works. Fermín turns the discarded paper into both a means of occupying himself and an occasion for mocking official propaganda.

His life outside conventional shelter is not presented as passive. During the weeks before Daniel’s return, Fermín has devised various escapades to avoid the security services, especially Inspector Fumero, whom he regards as his nemesis. His homelessness leaves him exposed to pursuit, but he responds with evasion and improvisation. In a city where he has no secure domestic refuge, ingenuity becomes one of his means of getting by.

The practical costs remain plain. When Daniel approaches, Fermín looks famished and dirty, and his appearance reflects months spent living on the streets. He grows anxious as Daniel leads him toward the bookshop, unsure of where he is being taken and apprehensive about entering a respectable establishment in his condition. His attempt to decline the invitation is not indifference: he worries that his appearance will embarrass Daniel and that he does not belong in such a place.

From street to household

Daniel’s return changes the immediate terms of Fermín’s survival. He offers to pay for the meal and asks whether Fermín is hungry. Fermín answers with characteristic humor, saying he would welcome seafood but would eat whatever was given to him. Daniel is not merely offering a single meal, however: he takes Fermín to his father’s bookshop and proposes introducing him to his father.

Fermín’s discomfort sharpens at the shop. He is dirty, nervous, and reluctant to cross the threshold, but Daniel’s father meets him with a calm welcome. When Fermín tries to leave, Sempere gently takes him by the arm and tells him that Daniel has invited him to lunch. He then offers Fermín a hot bath at home before they go to Can Sole. The welcome counters Fermín’s expectation that his poverty and appearance will exclude him; he is treated as a guest rather than as a problem to be sent away.

The bath and clean clothes mark a practical break with the street. Daniel and his father provide clothes, replace what cannot be salvaged, and help Fermín wash. He is frightened and trembling, and the family notices the marks on his wrists and ankles and the scars on his body, but they do not question him about them. The scene gives shelter and care without demanding an explanation as its price. By the time Fermín is dressed, he has begun talking freely with Sempere, and the two have already struck up a friendship.

A new place in the bookshop

Fermín’s homelessness gives way, in the immediate plot, to the possibility of stable work and belonging. When the bookshop needs help finding orders, Sempere describes the kind of person they need: part detective, part poet, inexpensive, and willing to tackle the impossible. Daniel believes Fermín is the right candidate. The offer connects the qualities Fermín has developed while surviving outside ordinary institutions—resourcefulness, observation, and adaptability—to useful work in the shop.

The change is not simply from poverty to employment. Fermín enters the Sempere family’s domestic life as well as its business: Sempere welcomes him upstairs, shares a meal with him, and treats him with warmth. His place in the shop grows out of that welcome. Homelessness therefore functions as both a material hardship and the setting for a consequential meeting, one that draws Fermín out from beneath the arches and into a lasting partnership with Daniel and his father.