Ramón Villaamil has given his life to the Ministry of Finance. At sixty-two, with only two months until his pension, a change in government leaves him out on the street. Now he haunts the corridors of power, begging former colleagues for intervention, chasing shadows of influence, watching his meager savings evaporate. His wife, daughter, and sister-in-law, known privately as "the Miaows" for their sharp features and sharper tongues, regard him with contempt. In a household where money is everything and he has become nothing, only his grandson Luisito offers genuine affection. The boy endures his own humiliations at school, mocked by classmates until "Miau" becomes his name. When the family dark horse, the handsome and unscrupulous Víctor Cadalso, reappears with vague promises of salvation, Villaamil must decide whether to accept help from a man he despises or watch his family slip further into ruin. Galdós writes with the precision of a scalpel, exposing the brutal arithmetic of Spanish society where a man's worth is measured in his position, and losing that position means losing everything. This is social realism at its most devastating and darkly funny.
