The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 and ended in 1939. The year the war ended was an important date not only in Spain’s national history but also in the country’s literary history. No major literary work was published in 1939. The rebel side took control of everything, including literary life, and forced many writers to leave their homeland, ensuring that no adversary remained who posed a threat to the regime. As a result, the country’s literature was divided in two: the writers who stayed in Spain chose their subjects in accordance with the oppression ruling the country; the intellectuals who left the country in exile wrote free from censorship. The ones who stayed in the country and those who went to exile lost contact and consequently there were two Spains: the migrant Spain and the captive Spain. The writers who had to leave the country behind and start a new life in foreign lands created during the long exile an enormous literary production. The writers of the migrant Spain reached a very high cultural level in their literary production. Poetry was the outstanding field in exile. There were few notable narrators, such as Max Aub, Francisco Ayala and Ramón J. Sender, who stood out with their works before the war. However, those and many more began to produce narrative works in their respective countries of asylum that reflected their concerns about the homeland. Many of the writers explored the causes or circumstances of the war in their literary works. The painful history and the tragic human stories found reflection in fiction. Segundo Serrano Poncela (Madrid, 1912 – Caracas, 1976) is one of the most distinguished writers of Spanish fiction written in exile. During his stay in Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico and Venezuela he became a prestigious critic and author of Spanish literature. He was intimately concerned with the national themes. He never returned to his native land, like many others, and died at the last stop of his exile. The two books of short stories, La puesta de Capricornio (1959) and Un olor a crisantemo (1967) reflect a psychological consistency. «Cirios rojos» is one of the three stories in La puesta de Capricornio, published in Buenos Aires. Serrano Poncela wrote the stories that make up the book in Puerto Rico and New York between 1956 and 1957. The story is about a Spanish Republican who tries to escape from his pursuers in a manhunt at the beginning of the civil war. He manages to find a place of shelter in the house of a devout woman and is denounced by her to his executioners. The story presents a situation of conflict caused by the confrontation between two adversaries who have different ways of living and thinking. At the beginning of the confrontation, a tension arises between them which remains unsolved until the end of the story. The cause of the tension seems to be the act of breaking into the house; however, the course of the events reveals the hidden desires of the woman. The man, unaware of her thoughts and feelings, makes an effort to convince her to help him. The woman provides him the help he needs by force; however, the house turns in the end into a trap that brings him death. The plot exposes the depths of human nature, revealing the difficulties in human relations. On the other hand, it presents a narrative structure well suited to a critical consideration from the perspective of deconstruction, establishing a hierarchical opposition between the characters, raising one side of the opposition and lowering the other. Hence, the reading allows for a deconstructive reading, expanding and exposing both sides of the opposition.