Which García Márquez short story features a winged old man found in a courtyard?

The García Márquez short story featuring a winged old man found in a courtyard is “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.”

Written in 1968 and published in English in 1971, the story opens after three days of rain, when Pelayo discovers a filthy, exhausted old man lying face down in his courtyard. The stranger has enormous wings, speaks an incomprehensible language, and is quickly treated as either an angel or a curiosity.

Pelayo and his wife, Elisenda, confine him in a chicken coop while crowds arrive to see him. They charge admission and profit from the spectacle, yet the visitors largely treat the old man as an exotic sideshow. Father Gonzaga doubts that he is an angel because he looks too human and does not understand Latin.

The story is a classic example of magical realism because the impossible wings appear in an otherwise ordinary world and are handled with startling practicality. Readers sometimes assume the old man’s identity is confirmed, but García Márquez deliberately leaves his nature unresolved. A spider woman eventually attracts the crowd’s attention, and the old man later regains his strength and flies away.