This paper analyses the links of the Spanish writer Jose Maria Merino to the Chekhovian tradition of short-story writing. The paper focuses on Merino's critic works on Russian literature and, specifically, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Nonetheless, main interest is granted to a short story titled La trama oculta. The title refers to a hidden plot, since according to Merino's words, reality comprises both a visible and, at the same time, a non-perceptible face. In this story, intertextual features with Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard are observed and trigger the so-called unhiddenness of reality, simultaneously showing its two aspects. This situation explains the main character to alter his mood and change behavior expectancy. Once reality is unhidden, La trama oculta frames the current of time through the reference to memory and childhood. In this sense while childhood provides a basis for adult behavior, memory is narrated as an unstable condition leading to identity misperception. Consequently, the analysis of such narrative features shows Merino's sharing of main elements in the Chekhovian tradition of short-story writing.
