Ten years after fleeing to Buenos Aires, Jorge Aldaya returns to Barcelona in ruin: he has lost his money, reputation, and even his father’s communion watch, which buys his passage home. Sick with fever and consumed by resentment, Jorge blames Julián Carax for the downfall he believes was “snatched” from him and clings to his father’s deathbed demand that he take revenge.

Searching for Carax, Jorge finds that Julián seems to have vanished from Barcelona. By chance, Jorge runs into Francisco Javier Fumero at the Novedades Café. Fumero has transformed from the disturbed schoolboy Jorge remembers into a feared killer with a stained reputation after a scandal ended his army career.

Fumero takes the weakened Jorge to his apartment in the Raval, where he keeps jars of insects and, despite claiming to hate books, a small collection of Carax’s novels. Fumero hires the prostitutes who live across the hall to watch over Jorge while Fumero works, because Fumero does not want Jorge to die yet.

Fumero’s career is revealed: he joins the Crime Squad under Lieutenant Durán, who preaches policing as a mission. Soon after, Durán dies in a raid when he falls through a skylight—an “accident” Fumero privately frames as necessary, since Fumero admits to himself that he pushed Durán aside to take his position.

In March 1932, as Jorge recovers, he confesses his past cruelty toward Fumero and tells him the full Aldaya story. Fumero, weighing whether to kill Jorge, chooses to keep him alive because the account rekindles Fumero’s obsession with Julián Carax and Penélope Aldaya. Fumero knows Carax is in Paris and has been shadowing Nuria Monfort to get the address; instead of killing Jorge, Fumero imagines fate has delivered him a tool, and he decides Jorge will help ensnare everyone he wants in his “web.”