Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
*Gerona.
Alvear apartment. Gerona home of the Alvears, a typical Spanish family living on the second floor of a flat overhanging the Onar River. Because of the river’s seasonal floods, the neighborhood is seen as unattractive, though the Alvear residence is better than the flats the family occupied earlier in Madrid, before Matías Alvear, a Republican, was transferred to Gerona to work as a clerk in the telegraph office. Because Alvear is from Madrid and his wife, Carmen Elgazu, is from the Basque provinces, events occurring in the rest of Spain influence family members. For example, one month after the Republic is proclaimed, Matías’s brother, a radical, participates in the burning of churches and convents in Madrid.
Seminary. Religious institution in Gerona that the eldest Alvear son, Ignacio, enters at the same time the family settles in the city. The seminary occupies the heights of the city; it, the cathedral, and other churches of Gerona represent the overpowering presence of Roman Catholicism in Spanish life. However, the seminary proves to be only an interlude in Ignacio’s search for himself, and he leaves the religious vocation for the secular life. Coinciding with Ignacio’s loss of vocation is the proclamation of the Spanish Republic. Later, his young brother César, who is deeply devout, becomes a happy and successful seminarian.
Gerona slums. Ignacio spends more and more time in these Geronese slums, which both attract and repel him. He sees the dilapidated houses, smells the rotting garbage, and hears the growls of the half-starved dogs, but he also gets to know the people, who have an innate happiness that bubbles to the surface in their saloons and cafés. His walks from one part of Gerona to others are like his attraction first to one political ideology, such as socialism, then to another, such as Falangism, as he struggles to find a rational mean between irrational extremes.
Political headquarters. Gerona’s many political parties have their particular realms. For example, Izquierda Republicana, the left republican party, has the best hall in town. The Liga Catalana, the conservative Catholic party, holds its social events in church halls. The Confederación del Trabajo, whose objective is the establishment of anarchism, meets in the largest of the city’s three gymnasiums. The monarchists gather in the editorial office of El Tradicionalis, and the communists, who are poorly organized, meet in a barbershop.
Cemetery. Tensions between Catholics and communists, between the poor and the privileged, and between right-wing and left-wing parties lead to increasing violence and the piling up of corpses in the local cemetery. Communist and anarchist crowds burn eight churches and three convents in Gerona in less than two hours. Doctors and lawyers are forced from their homes and priests from their rectories. Charged with being “fascists,” they are dragged to the cemetery and shot. Among the victims in the cemetery is the young seminarian César Alvear, and the final beat of his heart ends the novel.