Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira

Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira
(1933)
Born	April 23, 1879 Ferrol, A Coruña, Spain
Died	December 28, 1955(1955-12-28) (aged 76) Ciempozuelos, Spain
Known for	Murdered her teenage daughter whom she conceived as a eugenics experiment.

Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira (Ferrol, A Coruña, April 23, 1879 – Ciempozuelos, Community of Madrid, 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.

Biography

Although she lied about her age, and many versions circulate, it is believed that Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira was born in 1879,^[1] in the family home on Magdalena street, in Ferrol, A Coruña, Spain. Her parents were Francisco Rodríguez Arriola (b. 1833) and Anna Carballeira Lopes.^[2] She was raised by a doting father in upper class, eccentric circumstances.^[3]

Faced with the lack of a formal education that she always regretted (and that would be one of the reasons given for her daughter to complete the work for which her mother was not prepared), Aurora replaced it with readings from her father's abundant library, liberal and progressive ideas, fundamentally utopian socialists.

When Aurora's sister Josefa had a son, Pepito Arriola, and left him in the care of Aurora (who was sixteen years old), she educated him until he became a child prodigy, at which time Pepito was 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 who would become an example of Aurora's ideas. She looked for a father who could never claim paternity of the future baby. According to Professor María Rosa Cal Martínez, who established the identities with arguments, it was a Lleida military priest named Alberto Pallás. Aurora had three sexual encounters with him^[4] as a "physiological collaborator" until, being sure of the pregnancy, Aurora moved to Madrid to give her daughter the life Aurora had prepared for her.

The experiment initially met Aurora's expectations. Hildegart became an international personality, until the freedom in which she was brought up led Hildegart to a deep political commitment and an attempt to separate from her mother. Aurora, inspired by madness (an alleged conspiracy to ruin her eugenic experiment) and the fear of losing her daughter, killed Hildegart on June 9, 1933, by shooting her four times while the teenager was sleeping.^[1] Aurora never regretted Hildegart's murder and repeated that she would do it again. Aurora 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 disappeared 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

Literary

• 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

• My Daughter Hildegart (1977), directed by Fernando Fernán Gómez, with a script by the director himself and by Rafael Azcona. Aurora is played by Amparo Soler Leal.^[6]
• The red virgin (2014), directed by Sheila Pye. Aurora is played by Maribel Verdú.^[6]
• Hildegart oder Projekt: Superwoman (2016), directed by Barbara Caspar.^[7]
• Hildegart, upcoming film directed by Paula Ortiz, with Najwa Nimri playing Aurora.^[8]

References

Bibliography

• 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.

This page was last edited on 19 May 2024, at 02:31