Fermin Romero de Torres and Bernarda

The relationship between Fermín Romero de Torres and Bernarda gives Fermín’s comic language of seduction a consequential turn: the man who once treated romance as a contest comes to measure himself by whether he can make Bernarda happy. His courtship moves from a claimed chaste kiss and elaborate theories about winning a woman’s heart to a private resolve to become a better man, accept the possibility of family life, and earn her pride.## Courtship and the art of patience Fermín speaks about Bernarda to Daniel Sempere with the air of an expert explaining a craft. When Daniel asks whether there has been a kiss, Fermín insists that kissing is for amateurs and that women are won over gradually, through psychology. He likens the process to a bullfighter’s faena: not a single decisive gesture, but a sequence of moves requiring attention and control. The courtship is thus first presented through Fermín’s familiar performance as a seducer, complete with grand theories and comic self-confidence.

That performance makes room for a more careful claim. Fermín says he has contented himself with a chaste kiss on Bernarda’s cheek because he does not want to take advantage of her and is not in a hurry. His account is colored by boastfulness—he compares Bernarda to a volcano and describes his own supposed expertise in extravagant terms—but its stated principle is patience. He rejects the idea that a woman’s silence or lack of protest amounts to consent, and argues that genuine intimacy requires understanding her and winning her soul rather than treating physical access as conquest. His language remains comic and self-dramatizing, yet the distinction he draws is serious: a lasting relationship cannot be reduced to a seducer’s quick victory.

Fermín calls himself a pragmatist rather than a poet. In his view, the Don Juan is a loser in disguise; what he wants is permanence and durability. He promises that he will make Bernarda happy, even if he cannot make her an “honest woman”—a qualification he immediately withdraws because she is already honest. The joke preserves his irreverent voice, while the contrast between fleeting conquest and permanence marks the change his courtship is beginning to demand of him.## Daniel’s concern for Bernarda Daniel does not simply applaud Fermín’s romantic confidence. He reminds him that Bernarda has a heart of gold and has already endured too many disappointments, then asks him to take care of her. The appeal makes the relationship answerable to more than Fermín’s pleasure or self-image: Bernarda’s prior hurt is part of what Daniel wants Fermín to recognize. Fermín replies that her disappointments are plain to him and promises to make her blissfully happy, even if it is the last thing he does. He seals the promise by extending his hand, and Daniel shakes it.

The exchange gives Daniel the role of witness and moral interlocutor. His confidence in Fermín is not automatic; he asks for his word, then accepts the handshake as a pledge. Fermín’s declaration is still delivered in his characteristic bravura, but it is now directed toward an obligation to someone else. The relationship’s sincerity is therefore shown not by abandoning his humor, but by what he says that humor must serve: care for a woman who has suffered and a commitment that is meant to last.## Love as a reason to change Later, Fermín’s understanding of the relationship has shifted from winning Bernarda to becoming someone who deserves her. He admits to Daniel that he has changed because Bernarda has made him want to be a better man. Marriage and family, once dismissed by him as a yoke, are not inherently meaningful, he argues; without real love they are only hypocrisy and empty words. What matters is the love lived in private and in practice, not the institution by itself.

Fermín’s imagined future reveals the scale of this change. He thinks Bernarda would be happiest as a mother, though he says he has not told her that he wants them to have a child. He understands the thought as something visible between them rather than a proposal he has voiced. He is prepared, he tells Daniel, to enter a church after thirty-two years of clerical abstinence and recite whatever psalms are required. The prospect matters less as a specific plan than as evidence of what he is willing to give up: his old refusal of marriage and religious respectability no longer outweighs the possibility of making Bernarda happy.

Fermín also wants to recover respectability, but not for the approval of society, which he scorns. He wants Bernarda to be proud of him because she believes in radio soaps, priests, respectability, and Our Lady of Lourdes. Rather than demanding that she become like him, he values her as she is—even noticing the hairs on her chin with affection—and wants to become a man who fits the standards she cherishes. His imagined models of masculine distinction range from Cary Grant and Hemingway to Manolete, but the point is intimate rather than public: he wants Bernarda to see him as a man she can admire.## A reciprocal future, not a conquest Daniel tests Fermín’s sudden vision of family life by asking whether he has discussed having a child with Bernarda. Fermín says he has not, drawing a comic distinction between an inward desire and the crude announcement that he wants to get a woman pregnant. Daniel then asks whether he has told her he would like a family; Fermín again assumes that such things show on a person’s face. The exchange leaves a clear limit to his transformation: his commitment is genuine in his account, but some of its most consequential hopes remain unspoken between the couple.

Daniel nevertheless tells Fermín he thinks he would make an excellent father and husband. The judgment connects Fermín’s past skepticism to his possible future: because he once rejected those roles, Daniel believes he will not take them for granted. That reassurance does not establish that Bernarda has agreed to become a mother or that the couple has made a settled plan. Instead, it gives shape to Fermín’s aspiration and to Daniel’s faith that the man who once mocked domestic obligation may approach it with unusual seriousness.

The relationship’s significance lies in this reversal. Fermín’s early account presents seduction as a practiced art, but his later language centers on restraint, sacrifice, and the desire to be worthy of another person. He still speaks in extravagant comparisons and irreverent jokes; the transformation does not erase the comic performer. It changes the aim of his performance. Bernarda is no longer a prize in a contest of charm, but the person whose happiness gives his ambitions their measure. The future remains partly imagined and partly unspoken, yet Fermín’s stated promise—to make her happy and become someone she can be proud of—marks a genuine movement from conquest toward care.