The story is set in the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. It was the republican government versus the nationalist fascist forces.
 
When the narrator of the story asks the old man sitting at the bridge about his political views, he says, “I am without politics.” He was seventy-six years old and all he was concerned about was his pet animals.
 
But about the narrator, he was in the republican side, with the government, as he mentions the fascist forces coming towards Ebro as the ‘enemy’.