Fernando Ramos (f951ef92)

Fernando Ramos is a priest whose memories give Daniel Sempere access to the school years of Julián Carax and his friends. Once part of that youthful circle, he becomes one of its few surviving witnesses; later, his kindness to Jacinta Coronado and his willingness to officiate at Daniel’s wedding show how old loyalties persist in modest acts of care.

Identity and Background

Fernando studied at the same school as Julián, Miquel Moliner, Jorge Aldaya, and Francisco Javier Fumero. Their friendship began among boys of different backgrounds: Fernando knew rejection because his origins were humble, and he responded by making a special effort to be kind to Javier, the strange son of the school caretaker. When Javier began joining the others after finishing his assigned work, he generally said little and watched the group. Jorge was uneasy around him; Fernando, by contrast, tried to include him.

Fernando’s kindness did not mean that he was unaware of Javier’s disturbing behavior. Miquel, who taught Javier the basics of chess and watched him cautiously, warned the group that the boy tortured cats and pigeons. That recollection establishes an early contrast between Fernando’s impulse to welcome an outsider and Miquel’s more guarded attention to the risks Javier presented. In adulthood, Javier would become the violent Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Fumero, making Fernando’s memories of the quiet schoolboy part of a darker history.

Recollections of the School Years

Years later, Fernando recounts the past to Daniel and Fermín Romero de Torres. His account brings Fumero into the narrative with such force that Fermín turns pale and begins to shake. Fermín tries to dismiss his reaction as a sudden drop in blood pressure, but the moment makes clear that Fernando’s recollections have touched a history he finds frightening. Fernando, for his part, speaks of the boys as former friends rather than reducing their shared past to the violence into which some of them later fell.

Fernando also remembers Jacinta as the devoted governess who raised Jorge and Penelope Aldaya. Because Don Ricardo Aldaya wanted his children watched at all times by someone from his household, Jacinta sometimes came to the school to collect Jorge. She treated Fernando and Julián with particular generosity, bringing them afternoon snacks because she assumed their modest circumstances might leave them hungry. Fernando told her that his father was a cook and that he had enough to eat, but she continued to bring food. He remembered her as the kindest person he had known, a woman without children or a known partner who had given her life to the Aldaya children and especially loved Penelope.

Fernando’s school memories also intersect with the younger couple’s secret courtship. Jacinta sometimes used her visits to carry Penelope’s messages to Julián, and she occasionally brought Penelope to the school so that the two could meet briefly. Fernando became someone Jacinta trusted and, much later, her only remaining friend. Through his recollections, the school is not merely the setting for the boys’ friendship: it is also where acts of practical kindness helped sustain a love that the Aldaya household kept under constraint.

Friendship and Loss

Fernando recalls that he, Miquel, Jorge, Julián, and even Fumero once seemed destined to remain inseparable. As time passed they grew apart, and the promise of their childhood companionship was not fulfilled. When Fernando later heard that Julián had died, he was deeply saddened. He acknowledges that much had happened and that the friends had drifted away from one another, yet he still calls them good friends and says he never found another circle like them.

That memory gives Fernando’s testimony a personal weight. He is not simply supplying Daniel with names and background; he is grieving a vanished world in which the boys still belonged to one another. His hope that Daniel will find what he is seeking carries the warmth of someone who understands both the value of friendship and how little of it life may leave intact.

Fernando and Jacinta

Fernando continues to visit Jacinta when she is old and living at the Hospice of Santa Lucia. She has no one else who comes to see her, and he visits because he remembers how she cared for him as a boy. When Jacinta’s memory falters, he gently reminds her that she used to collect Jorge from school and asks whether she remembers Fernando and Julián. At Julián’s name, she whispers it slowly, and her smile shows that the memory still reaches her.

Their connection is reciprocal, though shaped by different losses. Jacinta once fed and comforted the schoolboys; as an old woman, she receives the companionship of the boy she had helped. Fernando explains his visits through memory and gratitude rather than obligation, while his continued presence makes him the friend she has said she lacks. The contrast between her devotion to the Aldaya children and her isolation in the hospice sharpens the importance of his return.

Role in Daniel’s Wedding

Fernando’s care for others later takes a practical form at Daniel’s wedding to Beatriz Aguilar. Fermín Romero de Torres has taken charge of the ceremony and its preparations, but the parish priest refuses to marry the couple because the bride is pregnant. Faced with a wedding ready to proceed but no officiant, Fermín goes to San Gabriel’s School and recruits Fernando, who has never performed a wedding. His specialties are Latin, trigonometry, and gymnastics, in that order, rather than conducting marriage ceremonies.

Fermín persuades him by presenting the groom as too weak to be upset and by appealing to Fernando’s supposed standing as a representative of the Church. Fernando accepts the role, allowing the ceremony to go ahead. The episode brings the former schoolmate of Julián and Jacinta’s enduring friend into Daniel’s family story: where the past has often separated people through secrecy, loss, and fear, Fernando’s final contribution is to help a new household begin.