Significance/identity of man in picture in father's study

Still thinking about that. Thanks for drawing it out!

This meshes with the father being asked to identify the body and to explain how the ex-soldier came to possess things that belonged to the father. He apparently gave the explanation the items had been "stolen" from him, and they apparently accepted it in the end.

But their earlier dubiousness is obvious from their body language. It seems they were ready to accuse the father of explicitly/knowingly aiding the ex-soldier. Having his politics be anti-Franco meshes well with the automatic suspicion.

We see that he now spends a lot of time in his study reading and writing. But clearly it's just a habit and nobody is paying any attention, as he does it during the night (unpaid time) rather than during the day (paid time), and as he sometimes expends his efforts on nothing more than folding paper cranes.

I think the photo is one of those that Ana looks at in the old photo album. It's of three men standing: a much younger Fernando standing between two "professor" types. Although the identities don't seem all that clear (I surmise a clearer reference wouldn't have gotten past the censors), the man on the right could very well be Miguel de Unamuno (I'm relying on a Wikipedia portrait, not on any personal knowledge).

Fernando's study doesn't appear to contain any photos. Other than one large painting directly behind his desk, the walls are entirely taken up with bookshelves. And his desktop is apparently a "work space", furnished with various reading (lamp) and writing (ink?) equipment, but no personalization - no keepsakes nor photos.

de Unamuno sounds like an interesting character: He had already been exiled once for opposing a previous dictator. He would have preferred to be a professor of philosophy, but couldn't deal with the politicization of that specialty. He initially supported the Franco revolution, but later vocally opposed it; he ultimately opposed both sides in the Spanish Civil War. He was a sort of "internationalist", and as such wouldn't have been comfortable with the semi-isolation of Franco's Spain. He made a challenging speech which risked getting him lynched on the spot, except he was rescued by Franco's wife. His major theme -if one can be so presumptuous as to sum up a whole life in a single phrase- was to resist the intrusion of ideology into western intellectual life.

An interpretation of the photo is that Fernando is being portrayed as some sort of "protege" of de Unamuno. If so, he would have become "politically suspect" and hence unemployable as an academic. One interpretation is he was "banished" to this remote location under the "supervision" of the local police (like Siberia under the Tsar?) and allowed to have a family, but is woefully under-employed, lonely for suitable intellectual company, and emotionally shattered.