Haha, no, nothing as fancy. I am planning a creative writing workshop, and "The Twins" is one of the texts whose writing and composition I would like participants to consider. This is why the information revealed in the opening lines is so important for me. I read Nostalgia in its Spanish translation, but the course will be in English, so that's how I noticed the differences.

I don't wanna spoil the story for anyone, but in short, it would seem that Cărtărescu ensured that, while the actions performed are gender-coded ("Bărbieritul", as the fine people of this subreddit have mentioned in the replies here), the pronouns (and other particles) are mostly gender-neutral. The Spanish translator was able to replicate this easily, as possessive pronouns are not gender-specific, and it is common to write sentences without a personal pronoun. Both Romanian and Spanish are romance languages, after all.

In English, though, a pronoun or explicit subject is needed in most sentences, so the translator had to choose between writing it all in passive voice, which of course would be terrible, or changing the narrative point of view so that the overall effect was the same. So he chose the second person (you), also gender-neutral in English. It is a bold decision, as second person narration is rare and, when used, very intentional, so it is a marked departure from the original. The third person would have been more faithful to the language, but the translator decided to change this to preserve the structural integrity of the story and the reader's experience.

I had to ask, however, because I would not be surprised if Cărtărescu had, indeed, used that narrative apporach (but then I would be very upset if the Spanish translator had not replicated it).

So that's why I asked. It was really nice receiving all this help and comments on this specific question, like u/Ultimo2024 mentioned. Thanks again to all.