The lovely story of Miniature Man is set in a little mountain town in Spain and focuses on the reclusive Gregorio, a miniaturist whom no one believes will be successful. He has been building a miniature museum for 15 years, and even won the lottery during a past stay in England, but he used most of his winnings to invest in his museum, which earned him the resentment of his neighbors and relatives.
The narrator, Dr. Xavia, is the cousin to Gregorio’s mother and tries to maintain a neutral stance in their familial conflicts. The conflict that sets the story into motion is when Gregorio’s hands are crushed and he comes to Dr. Xavia for help. Regular people, as it is stated in the story, move their hands a million or more times a day, even without realizing it. For an artist, their hands mean everything. Dr. Xavia knows that much of Gregorio’s motor ability in his hands are going to be rendered null from this accident. Unable to use his hands, he’s forced to rely mainly on his mother, who tends to infantilize him while also being quite unsubtle about how extremely unsupportive she is towards his artistic endeavors.
Throughout the story, the doctor tends to inflect a certain lens of pity upon Gregorio and his ambitions, a certain sense of ‘you were such a gifted child, what happened?’ even if Dr. Xavia may not mean to. But Dr. Xavia ultimately attempts to support Gregorio by the end, which shows itself when he recruits Gregorio’s British nephew, Patrick, to film his miniature museum in a positive, beautiful light. Gregorio’s parents, who were two of the most vocal critics of Gregorio’s miniature museum, are brought to tears by the beauty captured in Patrick’s film, and though not stated, it is implied that their stance on Gregorio’s project has changed substantially.