Hildegart Rodríguez was a Spanish intellectual who, before reaching her twenties, was already presenting herself as a promising avant-garde and revolutionary figure in the Spain of the 20’s and 30’s. Her voice, jovial but forceful, was raised on topics as controversial at the time as women’s suffrage or studies on sexuality. However, the life, and also the death of Hildegart, cannot be understood without the authoritative figure of her mother; Dawn. When on the morning of June 10, 1933, the national newspapers published the news of the assassination of Hildegart Rodriguez at the hands of his mother, Aurora; Spanish society could not help but be shocked by the unexpected filicide. This article presents a contextualization and possible explanation of the event
The mother: Aurora Rodriguez
Aurora was born into a wealthy family in Ferrol in 1879 (Miranda, 2019: 87). Her family environment was made up of her father, a wealthy lawyer, and her mother, a graduate in teaching. They were joined by her three brothers. Her older sister, Pepita, was decisive in the life of the young woman for being the mother of her nephew, Pepito Arriola. On the other hand, her little brothers were less relevant in Aurora’s life. The middle one left for America when he was young and a third brother, the youngest of all, died at an early age due to tuberculosis (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 4).
Aurora grew up feeling much more connected to her father than to the rest of the family. Her father, a lawyer of great reputation, made available to the young woman a large number of cultural resources that made Aurora a cultured girl who knew great theorists, especially those of utopian socialism such as Saint-Simon, Owen and Fourier (Bosch Fiol and Ferrer Pérez, 2011: 212), in addition to the Nietzschean ideal of übermensch (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 5).
When Pepita, Aurora’s older sister, disregarded the son she had had while still single, the care of it fell to Aurora. She was in charge of educating little Pepito, and instructing him in music, making the young man a great pianist, who ended up being known as nothing less than “The Spanish Mozart” (Bosch Fiol and Ferrer Pérez, 2011: 212). This same stardom would attract back her mother, Pepita, who quickly cut off relations between her aunt and nephew.
This episode is interpreted as the prelude to the eugenic drift of Aurora’s life; she, well, she is her at this moment of youth, losing the relationship with her nephew; her when she begins to hesitate between dedicating her life to the creation of a eugenic colony (inspired by the utopian ideas of the phalansteries and the owenism) or to the upbringing and education of a single first-born, through whom to seek perfection, as he had already tried to do with his nephew Pepito. He will opt for this last option, Thus, Hildegart Rodríguez was born; its garden of wisdom; its Red Madonna. (Miranda, 2019: 87)
Aurora will understand eugenics as the search for the perfection of the human being. This idea has little to do with race, physical characteristics, or gender; but it is related to the development of intelligence. Therefore, he will seek to print all those qualities in his daughter, Hildegard.
The daughter: Hildegart Rodríguez. The Garden of Wisdom
Once Aurora had made the decision to father a son to mold and instruct to serve as a eugenic model or even a moral guide for the world, she sought a man with whom to conceive said firstborn. The identity of this man was never known, but it was speculated that he could be a sailor close to the family (Bosch Fiol and Ferrer Pérez, 2011: 213).
Hildegart’s conception turned out to be a mere formality for Aurora, the uncomfortable but necessary requirement to carry out her plan, and she explains it this way:
“I want to state emphatically and categorically that Hildegart did not come to life by chance, nor by the simple animal desire of her parents to engender her, as almost all beings in the world are born. She was not the product of a blind sexual passion, but a perfectly prepared plan, executed with mathematical precision and with a specific purpose. She was born with a determined goal, with an ideal mission from which she could not be diverted by any human weakness. I who created her, who made her, who formed her over the years, I know exactly where she should go”. (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 11).
Already pregnant, Aurora moved to Madrid, where she would give birth in December 1914. (Miranda, 2019: 87). From that moment, Aurora’s life will focus on absolute control over her daughter Hildegart; so that the little girl grew up surrounded by books and knowledge, but completely isolated from other children or even from innocent toys.
In this way, Hildegart learned English, French and German at an early age; She, in addition to being led to the great knowledge of contemporary culture, such as studies on sexuality, philosophy, or eugenics that so fascinated her mother (Rámila, 2012: 11).
Through this strict and oppressive instruction, Aurora managed to get Hildegart to graduate from high school at the age of 14, subsequently entering the Law degree at the Central University, and at the same time joining the PSOE in the Madrid Socialist Youth; organization in which she was elected vice president only a year later (Rámila, 2012: 11).
It was at that moment when the life and actions of Hildegart, and therefore of Aurora, acquired a certain social fame, since it was not unusual to see mother and daughter at political meetings or social gatherings. The intellectual activity of both is reflected in various areas of public life; Hildegart joined Victoria Kent’s voice on the suffragette question (Ramila, 2012: 11); both thought that before a woman could vote she had to be properly educated to exercise her right with all the necessary freedom and conscience.
The mother-daughter binomial also co-founded in 1932 the Spanish League for Sexual Reform on Scientific Basis together with Gregorio Marañón; an organization of maximum scientific importance, presided over in the first place by the famous doctor and scientist (Rámila, 2012: 13). Through this entity, they created an atmosphere of discussion among intellectuals on issues as contemporary and hot on the social scene as sexuality, or eugenic ideas, so emerging in Europe at the time.
However, it was due to this great exposure to the media and, therefore, to society, when some people close to mother and daughter realized the incessant control and obsession of which Hildegart was a victim. Well, Aurora not only accompanied the young woman to public events or to her classes at the university, but she continued to control and dispose of the young woman’s life at her complete whim. An example of this is the opinion that she referred Julian Besteirothe young woman’s teacher during her university years:
Julián Besteiro, who was the young woman’s teacher, said of her: “Hilde is simply formidable in her studies, but this phenomenon of being so close to her mother evokes in me the image of a baby kangaroo encapsulated in an invisible bag and with intact umbilical cord. (Bosch Fiol and Ferrer Pérez, 2011: 216).
Although Hildegart’s oratory capacity was not as extraordinary as his other intellectual qualities, his public appearances became more and more frequent in the political-social panorama of the time; consequently, his speech was also gaining importance over the years. Hildegart was the voice of women in terms of sexual liberation and fundamental rights; she was also a well-known columnist in publications such as The Segovian, La Liberta and La Tierra. In addition, their appearance in cultural events became a constant (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 16).
However, his influence was not limited to the national territory, but rather began to be related to great European intellectuals such as Havelock Ellis, a great authority on sexuality studies in the 20th century; or HG Wells, the famous British writer. (Bosch Fiol and Ferrer Pérez, 2011: 215)
Development of events: the murder of Hildegart Rodríguez
It is precisely in the face of this mass success that the young Hildegart tries to reclaim her place not only in the world, but in her own home; for Therefore, the young woman demands her own space and independence from her mother.. For Aurora, this principle of independence so common among young people was completely inconceivable, even more so that her daughter would establish relationships of any kind without her mediation. This meant a perversion of her perfect work, the bankruptcy of the eugenic model in which she had poured not only her savings and her time, but also the ultimate goal of her life.
The problems at home ended up disrupting the professional life of mother and daughter. The schism between the two was made clear in a discussion of the previously mentioned Spanish League for Sexual Reform; when it was debated whether temporary vasectomy in young men with the aim of preventing unwanted pregnancies was an acceptable thesis. While Aurora was prone to this idea, Hildegart was absolutely against it (Rámila, 2012: 13).
The abyss between the two reached its peak when the young woman was 18 years old, because then she came to blurt out to her mother that she planned to leave home, travel, and, ultimately, organize her life independently of her mother. (Ramila, 2012: 13). As a consequence of these words, Aurora began to think that the reason that really distanced her daughter from her was a possible love relationship with a man; Among her daughter’s friends, she came to suspect the aforementioned HG Wells, a fellow socialite of the young woman (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 101).
Aurora’s neurosis crossed the limits of rationality when she added an international component to the alleged relationship between HG Wells and Hildegart, since she came to think that the British man was approaching her daughter with the aim of making her a spy in the service of his country. (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 54).
This alleged espionage plot was too much for the neurosis suffered by Aurora, who found herself abandoned by her most beloved, and at the same time unique, creation. Consequently, and after a brief discussion between the two, Aurora decides to end the life of her daughter during the early morning of June 9, 1933 firing a total of 4 shots at point-blank range at Hildegart. Aurora recounts:
“I felt that the spirit left the already dead body and even that it returned to me, who had known how to create. It reminded me of myself, after many decades I found myself again when I felt that Hildegart’s spirit was once again united with mine, forming a closely linked whole, indissolubly united”. (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 59).
Once the crime was committed, Aurora went to the home of her lawyer Mr. José Botella Asensi, ready to confess to the crime and surrender to the authorities (Pérez Sanz and Bru Ripoll, 1987: 59-60). Already accused of the confessed murder of her daughter, Aurora is…