Everyone who has visited A Coruña will surely have visited Calle Galera. A road located in the heart of the city whose name does not refer to the old sailboats that were called that way, but to the women’s prison that was there until its closure at the end of the 19th century. There, Concepción Arenal served as a visitor, whom Marilar Aleixandre has turned into one of the protagonists of women’s bags [Las malas mujeres] (Xordica) the novel written in Galician for which she was recognized with the 2022 National Narrative Award, and which she herself has translated into Spanish. The work is a neat exercise in historical memory that rescues so many, unfairly, ‘nobodies’ from monumental oblivion.
‘Condensed milk’ to digest adolescence and savor the “poetics of the filthy”
Further
The author found out about the existence of the penitentiary center thanks to the biography of Arenal written by Anna Caballé, which included the work that the journalist and poet carried out in it, as a fervent defender of the rights of inmates. Trying to go further and trying to collect more documentation on the prisoners who were held there and the reasons for their confinement, became a very complicated task. “I only found one person in A Coruña who knew it existed,” she told this newspaper, “there are many stories and lives that have been silenced, that have not interested anyone. Or rather that there has been an interest in forgetting them because, after all, a prison is a failure of society. And something that is considered a failure… It doesn’t give rise to writing about it”.
“When she disappeared, no one began to examine her,” she says of the prison. The writer transfers to the present this look that she shies away from today, and compares it with the way in which “immigrants are now left behind a fence. She moves out of sight. Recently there are archaeologists who are excavating things that we had no idea about, like the Jadraque concentration camp”.
“We put our hands in the earth, we fill our nails with dirt and we tell those stories of people whose names are mostly, or even all of us, but it is important to recover them”, defends the Madrid writer born in 1947.
Arenal is not the only real person included in Aleixandre’s novel. There is also the one who was his ally Juana de Vega, and Mercedes Fernández (Embodies in the book). “When she was ten years old, she accompanied her mother three times to have an abortion. In the last one, she did not expel the placenta and died, ”she describes about the second. “This happened in 1953. Sometimes people forget that in Spain abortion was clandestine until 1985,” warns Aleixandre, who prosecutes the misconception that was held about the reasons why women abort. “There is a myth that it was done for a matter of honor. And there were cases in which it was like that, but also because of hunger. Mercedes aborted three times because she could not feed more children.
The author affirms the following emphatically about the women of her generation: “We have all had an abortion, we have accompanied someone to have an abortion or we have raised money to pay someone for a clandestine one. It has happened to us but not much has been said about it. Why was this the case and why is it still happening in some countries? It is the history of violence, terrible, in this case on the body of women. But it goes further, it is that of institutional violence, patriarchy. And of a religion that considers itself authorized to impose that morality”.
Sometimes people forget that in Spain abortion was clandestine until 1985
Marilar Alexander
— writer
Today’s “bad women”
The creation of prisons for women, initially called the ‘Houses of Repentance’, were led by religious orders since the first half of the 16th century. At that time, “it was understood that the only role of women was to be first daughters and sisters, then wives and mothers.” A conception that Aleixandre criticizes for having reached “until today”, although he celebrates “the advances”: “The only revolution that has been triumphing since the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 19th century, with its forward and backward movements, is the feminist one” .
“Now there are many who are aware that this should not be the case, but for many centuries and still in many countries, even women themselves endorse this ideology. They assume that this structural violence that is exerted on them has no remedy, ”she laments.
Despite the lack of documentation, those considered “bad women” were locked up in prisons: thieves, pimps, prostitutes. We can assume that there was someone who entered for stealing a loaf of bread or not having a fixed address.
The only revolution that has been triumphing since the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 19th century, with its forward and backward movements, is the feminist one.
Marilar Alexander
— writer
Transferring the concept to the present, the author points out that today, “a bad woman would be the one who has been raped. We know that until recently, and in this the case of ‘la manada’ in 2018 was fundamental, most rapes were not reported, because the raped would be a ‘bad woman’. Even at trial she was said to be ‘revelry’. Already in the classical world, in Metamorphosis of Ovid, they were the raped women who were turned into bears, swans or whatever. But not Zeus. There is still an asymmetry about what a woman can or cannot do.” “In other words, we have to settle for criteria that we have not created. It is much more difficult to change the ideology than the laws, ”she laments.
Denying education as a form of violence
One of the most moving passages in the novel is the help given to each other by its female protagonists, solving the scourge of lack of education. “I am going to buy a notebook and a pencil to teach you to read and write. Tomorrow we start ”, practically orders one of them. In fact, this was Arenal’s main concern and mission during her time as a prison visitor, as a way of giving prisoners a chance to move on with their lives when they were released. “There are groups on which social violence has been exercised in many ways, and one of them is access to knowledge,” says Aleixandre.
“I recently came across a discussion that took place in the English parliament at the beginning of the 19th century over a proposal to organize parochial schools so that the poor could learn to read”, shares the author, who points out that one of the arguments that were pronounced against was: “If the poor learn to read, they will be unhappy with their lot. They will not resign themselves to their life.”
There are groups on which social violence has been exercised in many ways, and one of them is access to knowledge
Marilar Alexander
— writer
When assessing the situation of the prisons themselves, the writer affirms that “they continue to have many problems.” Nevertheless, she praises the advances derived from “efforts like the one in Arenal. When she took the position, there was no idea of reinsertion or anything like that. Not even she wants the word, she was talking about regeneration ”. Hence, she condemns that “much of what she tried was forgotten. There were things that she proposed in the 19th century that took 70 years to achieve in the first republic thanks to Victoria Kent, such as removing the shackles from prisons.
In one of Arenal’s letters collected in the novel, written in 1865, he formulated: “If you had known that the contempt of the world would push you to be despicable, and that having no protection in self-esteem, and despairing of yourselves, you would not find any other refuge than in the intoxication of evil and in despair… If you had known all this… Unfortunate women, now you know all these things; misfortune and guilt have taught you their sad mysteries. Aleixandre has been generous in her book, not only because of the story that she rescues, its protagonists and genres that she combines, but also with the original fragments that she includes from documents written at the time.
The writer takes the opportunity to also vindicate the figure of Juana de Vega: “She was born in 1805 and died in 1872. She was in all the liberal revolutions. As a girl, when she was ten years old, she would bring money to some escapees sentenced to death so that they could escape, she was exiled, she wrote her memoirs … Sometimes I think that if she were English we would know her better and we would surely have films about her ”. One claims that it adds to the defense of the “cultural heritage” that implies the existence of various languages in Spain, Galician being the one whose legacy she expands. “We have that wealth,” she praises.