Parts List (Despiece)

Vicente was sexually abused on multiple occasions by his Physical Education teacher when he was only eight years old. Today, the perpetrator is serving a sentence for abusing other children, but Vicente remained silent out of shame. Now, as an adult, he delves into the memories of his childhood in a Valencian town in the 1990s to remember, seek answers, and begin to heal from the trauma.

Vicente is forty years old. In 2023, he calls the Provincial Court of Valencia to request the ruling against a convicted pedophile from 1996. His request is denied: he is not a concerned party. That rejection drives him to delve into his memory and write the story of his childhood, marked by the abuse he suffered at school.

Vicente was born into a family of butchers. His parents, Domi and Vicente, work tirelessly. Meat permeates everything: the smell of blood, the cold storage rooms, and the pigs hanging from hooks are part of his daily life and exert an almost magical power over him. His sister Silvia is his greatest ally at home. In 1992, when Vicente is eight, the family moves to a town near Valencia. He leaves his friends behind and enrolls in Las Águilas, a private religious school considered one of the best in the area. There, his physical appearance and his desire to stand out earn him the nickname “Rabbit” and the mockery of his classmates. Over time, that mockery turns into bullying and physical violence.

In that context, Vicente seeks affection and recognition. He finds it in basketball. Eusebio, the Physical Education teacher, a former semi-professional player, recruits him for the team. Vicente feels special, the teacher’s favorite. For the first time, he believes he belongs to something. But that affection soon turns into a nightmare.

Eusebio begins to keep him alone after class: first in the storage room, then in the gym. He undresses him, touches him, kisses him. Vicente feels shame and fear, but also a strange complicity he does not know how to name; an awakening of desire stained by abuse. He tells no one. Meanwhile, in class, his classmates humiliate him and call him “faggot.” At the end of the school year, he fails every subject except Physical Education. Life in the town becomes almost unbearable.

Vicente was not the only one. In 1996, the news breaks in the press: Eusebio has been sentenced to nearly two hundred years in prison for sexually abusing seven students. Vicente is not among them; he chooses to bury that memory for twenty-five years. Until, as an adult, he seeks professional help and tells his parents, who react with pain and shock. Then the questions begin: how did the judicial system respond to the affected children? What responsibility did the school bear? Is it possible that someone knew what was happening? Is it worth remembering after so many years?

Vicente returns to the neighbourhood of his childhood, to the school. He tries to ring the bell to go inside, but an invisible force prevents him from moving his arm. He realizes there are still doors he cannot open alone. That night, he kisses his father on the cheek over and over: kisses that seem to erase years of silence. The next day, he finds an old photograph of himself, from September 1992, just before starting the school year that would change his life forever. In his imagination, he embraces that child and rescues him. The man holds the boy he once was; at last, they are together, out of the cold.

RELEVANT INFORMATION: Vicente Ferrer is a Spanish writer and journalist, a resident author in programs such as Residència Literària Finestres and Konvent Escriptura, spaces dedicated to fostering new literary voices.

Despiece, his literary debut, is an autofiction novel that combines the rawness of recounting abuse with the tenderness of family memory. An honest portrayal of the awakening of desire, shame, and fear, it also offers a vivid snapshot of life in a Spanish town in the 1990s.

AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Film, TV Film.

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES: Spanish.