Nuria Impersonates a Lawyer to Obtain Funds from the Fortuny Property

Nuria Monfort’s impersonation of a lawyer turns the uncertain ownership of Fortuny’s apartment and shop into a means of survival for her and Julian Carax. By inventing a legal intermediary and appealing to Sophie Carax’s desire to help her son, Nuria arranges a flow of money that supports them through years of poverty while deepening her reliance on concealment.

Poverty and the need for a plan

After the war, Nuria and Julian lived in severe poverty. Their savings and the money from Laín Coubert’s nighttime thefts had run out, and they had nothing left in the house to sell. Nuria sought work as a translator, typist, or cleaner, but her association with Cabestany made employers suspicious. Neighbours believed she was caring for her disabled, disfigured husband, Miquel, and sometimes brought food, including milk, cheese, bread, salted fish, and sausages. With steady employment unlikely, Nuria turned to a stratagem inspired by one of Julian’s novels.

The scheme answered an immediate need, but it also depended on the precarious identity under which the household survived. Nuria presented Julian as her ailing husband, Miquel, while he remained hidden from the world. Obtaining funds through the Fortuny property would help sustain that arrangement without requiring Julian to appear publicly or disclose who he was.

Inventing the lawyer

Nuria wrote to Julian’s mother in Bogota under the name José María Requejo, a fictitious lawyer. She explained that Fortuny had died without a will and that his estate—the apartment on Ronda de San Antonio and the shop in the same building—was theoretically due to his son Julian, believed to be living in exile in France. Because the death duties remained unpaid and Sophie lived abroad, the supposed lawyer asked her to authorize the necessary proceedings and transfer of the properties to Julian.

Nuria made the appeal persuasive by presenting Requejo as a temporary custodian acting in Julian’s interests. Until the transfer could be completed, he would assume temporary ownership of the properties and receive a degree of financial compensation. The letter also asked Sophie to instruct the building manager to send documents and property-expense payments to Requejo’s office. Nuria hoped that Sophie’s wish to help Julian and renew contact with him would keep her from questioning the legal language. The lawyer’s name, she later explained, recalled the first boy who had kissed her at school.

The money and its consequences

Nuria opened a post-office box under a false address: an abandoned garage two blocks from the ruins of the Aldaya mansion. A couple of months later, the building manager began receiving a monthly money order for the apartment’s expenses and Requejo’s legal fees. He forwarded the funds as an open cheque to Box 2321 in Barcelona, following Sophie’s instructions. Nuria noticed that he kept an unauthorized share each month, but allowed the arrangement to continue because he did not challenge it. The remaining money was enough for her and Julian to survive.

The scheme therefore rested on a chain of plausible but false representations: Fortuny’s supposed intestacy, Julian’s presumed exile, Requejo’s invented legal practice, and the transfer of documents and payments through a concealed post-office box. Its success depended not on formal proof but on Sophie’s willingness to believe that the arrangement could help her son, and on the manager’s willingness to take his portion without asking questions.

A precarious reprieve

The money brought relief, not security. Nuria found occasional work as a translator, and difficult years passed as people gradually forgot Cabestany and set aside old rivalries. Yet she continued to fear that Javier Fumero might begin investigating the past again. At times she persuaded herself that he had given Julian up for dead; at others she woke in fear that the police were at the door, or that neighbours would report the husband who never left the house and sometimes behaved as though in distress.

Nuria also feared Julian might escape their hiding place to search for his books. The property funds had helped keep them alive, but they could not end the danger or restore the life she had set aside. In her account, the impersonation is both a practical act of protection and one element in a longer existence shaped by secrecy, fear, and her sacrifice of youth to a man who had become almost a phantom.