Juan de Pareja—based on the real 17th-century man of the same name—is the novel’s dynamic protagonist and primary narrator. Juan is born in Seville to an enslaved woman named Zulema and remains enslaved to Doña Emilia after Zulema’s death. After Emilia dies, Juan is willed to Diego, a painter in Madrid, and relocates accordingly. Juan travels frequently throughout the novel, in Spain and abroad, and meets many different people, often recalling them fondly in his old age. When Juan briefly works for the baker Don Dimas, Dimas’s wife sews Juan a coat “made entirely of patches, some large, some small” (36), foreshadowing the variety of experiences that enrich Juan’s life. Similarly, this patchwork coat evokes the biblical story of the coat of many colors. In the story, Jacob gives Joseph a many-colored coat, signifying that Joseph is the most deserving of his brothers. Like Joseph, Juan is specifically anointed; when Juan escapes a plague outbreak, Brother Isidro speculates that “there is some duty [God] has laid upon [him]” (14).

As an enslaved man, Juan’s inferior social status dictates much of his life and its many relationships. At the novel’s beginning, he is bequeathed “along with all the other property” (16) and often grieves that he is considered “not a person but a slave” (24), vulnerable to routine dehumanization.