The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

WE WENT INTO FATHER FERNANDO'S OFFICE, WHERE THE priest summoned up his memories, adopting the tone of a sermon. He sculpted his sentences neatly, measuring them out with a cadence that seemed to promise an ultimate moral that never emerged. Years of teaching had left him with that firm and didactic tone of someone used to being heard, but not certain of being listened to.

"If I remember correctly, Julián Carax started at San Gabriel's in 1914. I got along with him right away, because we both belonged to the small group of pupils who did not come from wealthy families. They called us "The Starving Gang," and each one of us had his own special story. I'd managed to get a scholarship place thanks to my father, who worked in the kitchens of this school for twenty-five years. Julián had been accepted thanks to the intercession of Mr. Aldaya, who was a customer of the Fortuny hat shop, owned by Julián's father. Those were different times, of course, and during those days power was still concentrated within families and dynasties. That world has vanished-the last few remains were swept away with the fall of the Republic, for the better, I suppose. All that is left of it are the names on the letterheads of companies, banks, and faceless consortiums. Like all old cities, Barcelona is a sum of its ruins. The great glories so many people are proud of-palaces, factories, and monuments, the emblems with which we identify-are nothing more than relics of an extinguished civilization."