1879–1955
○ Died in a psychiatric hospital
Mother who raised her daughter Hildegart as the “woman of the future” and then killed her
On 9 June 1933 she shot dead her sleeping daughter, who was breaking away from her plan; she never repented and died in a psychiatric hospital.
Born into a well-off liberal family in Ferrol, she educated herself on the utopian socialists in her father’s library. Raising her sister’s son Pepito Arriola into a musical prodigy confirmed her beliefs in education, reform and eugenics. After her father’s death she chose a father who could never claim the child and in 1914 bore her daughter Hildegart as the “model of the woman of the future” who would defend women’s rights. When the daughter plunged into politics and tried to become independent, she shot her dead in her sleep on 9 June 1933. Sentenced to 26 years, she spent most of them in the Ciempozuelos psychiatric hospital, where she died in 1955.
Activities and affiliations
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1914–1933
Education
Related historical events
The “sculpture of flesh”: the experiment and the killing
She was born the daughter of Francisco Rodríguez Arriola, a lawyer in Ferrol. Lamenting all her life that she had no formal education, she read the utopian socialists in her father’s library. At sixteen she was left to raise the son her unmarried elder sister had borne, Pepito Arriola, and when he became famous as a prodigy of piano, violin and composition her ideas about education, social reform and eugenics hardened; but her sister took the boy away in 1899.
When her father died in January 1914 she resolved to raise offspring of her own in optimal conditions, proof of her ideas and a defender of women’s rights. She chose as father a military chaplain from Lleida, Alberto Pallás, who could never claim the child, had three “carnal encounters” with him and, once sure of the pregnancy, moved to Madrid, where her daughter Hildegart was born on 9 December. At first the “experiment” met her expectations, and her daughter became an international figure.
But the freely raised daughter plunged into politics and tried to break away from her. Believing in a conspiracy to ruin her “sculpture of flesh”, she fired four shots into her sleeping daughter on 9 June 1933. She never repented and repeated that she would do it again. Sentenced to 26 years, she was held in the Ventas women’s prison and the Ciempozuelos psychiatric hospital; long thought to have disappeared during the war, she was found, when her medical file came to light in 1977, to have died there of cancer on 28 December 1955 and been buried in a common grave.