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Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira

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This name uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Rodríguez, the second or maternal family name is Carballeira.

Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira
B&W portrait photograph of a standing, middle-aged woman, wearing a dress, holding a cat.
Rodríguez Carballeira in 1933
BornApril 23, 1879
Ferrol, A Coruña, Spain
DiedDecember 28, 1955(1955-12-28) (aged 76)
Ciempozuelos, Spain
Known forMurdering her teenage daughter whom she conceived as a eugenics experiment

Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira (April 23, 1879 – December 28, 1955) was a Spanish woman who is remembered as the mother of Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira, a girl she conceived as a scientific experiment and who, according to Aurora's wishes, was to represent the woman of the future. As Hildegart's fame as a child political activist grew, so too did Aurora's paranoid belief that an international conspiracy jeopardized the experiment. When Hildegart tried to gain independence at age 18, Aurora concluded the experiment was a failure and shot Hildegart dead. Aurora was tried for murder and institutionalized for the remainder of her life.

Biography

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It is believed that Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira was born in 1879,[1] in her family home on Magdalena street, in Ferrol, A Coruña, Spain. Her parents were Francisco Rodríguez Arriola (b. 1833) and Anna Carballeira Lopes.[2] Her family and the environment she grew up in have been described as upper-class.[3]

Aurora did not receive a formal education. Instead, she became self-taught on subjects such as liberalism, progressivism, and utopian socialism through her father's abundant collection of written works.

When Aurora's sister Josefa had a son, Pepito Arriola, and left him in the care of Aurora (who was then sixteen years old), she educated him until he became a child prodigy. He was subsequently claimed by his mother and taken to Madrid, where he had enormous success as a musician. This fact strengthened Aurora's reformist and eugenic ideas, in addition to her concerns for women's rights, and led her to conceive the project of raising a woman in optimal conditions as an example of her ideas. She looked for a father who could never claim paternity of the future baby. The father is reported to be a Lleida military priest named Alberto Pallás, according to Professor María Rosa Cal Martínez, who established the identities with arguments.[clarification needed] Aurora had three sexual encounters with Pallás[4] as a "physiological collaborator";[clarification needed] after becoming certain that she was pregnant, Aurora moved to Madrid to give her daughter the life she had prepared for her.

The 1934 trial of Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira for the death of her daughter Hildegart

The experiment initially met Aurora's expectations, with Hildegart becoming an international celebrity. However, the freedom in which Hildegart was brought up led her to choose differing political commitments[clarification needed] and to launch an attempt to gain independence from her mother. Aurora was unwilling to forego her control over her daughter's life, and was also affected by paranoid delusions that there was an international conspiracy to ruin the "perfect" result of her eugenic experiment. As a result, she killed Hildegart on June 9, 1933, shooting her four times while the teenager was asleep.[1] Aurora's own explanation was, "The sculptor, after discovering the most minimal imperfection in his work, destroys it." (Spanish: El escultor, tras descubrir la más mínima imperfección en su obra, la destruye).

Aurora never regretted murdering Hildegart and repeatedly said that she would do it again. She was sentenced to 26 years in prison, serving most of it in the Ciempozuelos psychiatric asylum.[5]

Until her medical records were found in 1977, Aurora was believed to have become one of the "disappeared"[clarification needed] during the Spanish Civil War, but she actually died of cancer in the Ciempozuelos psychiatric facility on December 28, 1955.[2] She was buried in a mass grave.

Works inspired by her life

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Literary

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  • Guzmán, Eduardo de (1972). Aurora de sangre: vida y muerte de Hildegart (in Spanish). Madrid: Gregorio del Toro.
  • Azcona, Rafael (1977). Aurora de sangre o La virgen roja: guión cinematográfico (in Spanish). Los autores. (Screenplay for the film by Fernán Gómez based on the novel by Eduardo de Guzmán.)
  • Llarch Roig, Joan, Hildegart, la virgen roja, Barcelona, Producciones editoriales, 1979.
  • Hackl, Erich, Auroras Anlaß, Diogenes Verlag, Zúrich 1987 ISBN 3257017340
  • Arrabal, Fernando (1987). La virgen roja (in Spanish). Seix Barral. ISBN 978-84-322-0564-4.
  • Rendueles, Guillermo (1989). El manuscrito encontrado en Ciempozuelos: análisis de la historia clínica de Aurora Rodríguez (in Spanish). Ediciones de la Piqueta. ISBN 978-84-7731-023-5. (Study of Aurora's clinical history at the Ciempozuelos hospital.)
  • Cal Martínez, María Rosa, A mí no me doblega nadie: Aurora Rodríguez, su vida y su obra (Hildegart), Ediciós do Castro, Sada (La Coruña), 1991. ISBN 84-7492-542-8
  • Domingo, Carmen, Mi querida hija Hildegart, ed. Destino, 2008. ISBN 8423340287
  • Martini, Antonietta, Infierno: Ribellarsi al Destino. Traduzione e studio de La virgen roja di Fernando Arrabal, Edizioni Accademiche Italiane, Saarbrücken, 2014. ISBN 9783639656923
  • Grandes, Almudena (2020). La madre de Frankenstein: agonía y muerte de Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira en el apogeo de la España nacionalcatólica, Manicomio de mujeres de Ciempozuelos, Madrid, 1954-1956 (in Spanish). Tusquets. ISBN 978-987-670-609-4. (It is the fifth novel in the Episodes of an Endless War series.)

Film

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References

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  1. ^ a b Ventura, Dalia. "La extraordinaria historia de Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, la española que engendró una "hija perfecta" y terminó asesinándola". BBC News Mundo (in Spanish). Retrieved July 19, 2023.
  2. ^ a b "Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira – Female – 23 April 1879 – 28 December 1955". familysearch.org. Retrieved July 19, 2023.
  3. ^ Brownmiller, Susan (April 13, 1989). "Radical feminism is basis of thriller". Chicago Tribune. p. 79. Retrieved July 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ Sinclair, Alison (May 1, 2007). Sex and Society in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: Hildegart Rodríguez and the World League for Sexual Reform. University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-7083-2470-7. Retrieved July 19, 2023.
  5. ^ "Madrid Woman Sent to Asylum". The Waterbury Democrat. December 27, 1935. p. 13. Retrieved July 19, 2023 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ a b Bravo, Edu (December 28, 2018). "Aurora Rodríguez, la peor madre del mundo era española". Vanity Fair.
  7. ^ Las críticas: Hildegart o el proyecto Superwoman, de Barbara Caspar
  8. ^ Pozo, José Carlos (June 14, 2023). "Najwa Nimri y Alba Planas protagonizarán Hildegart, la nueva película de Prime Video basada en hechos reales". HobbyConsolas.

Bibliography

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  • Alvarellos, Enrique (1993). Mulleres destacadas de Galicia. Alvarellos Editora. ISBN 84-85311-96-5.
  • Cal Martínez, María Rosa (1991). A mí no me doblega nadie: Aurora Rodríguez, su vida y su obra (Hildegart). Sada (La Coruña): Ediciós do Castro, 2010, ISBN 978-84-8485-301-5.
  • De Guzmán Espinosa, Eduardo. Aurora de sangre, Madrid: Gregorio del Toro, 1972.
  • Marco, Aurora (2007). Dicionario de Mulleres Galegas. Edicións A Nosa Terra. ISBN 978-84-8341-146-9.
  • Montero, Rosa (1998). Historias de mujeres (in Spanish) (18 ed.). Madrid: Extra Alfaguara. pp. 181-93. ISBN 84-204-8301-X.
  • Rendueles Olmedo, Guillermo. El manuscrito encontrado en Ciempozuelos: análisis de la historia clínica de Aurora Rodríguez Madrid: Endymion, 1989, ISBN 978-84-7731-023-5.
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