Rebeca Martín, writer: “Killing and narrating is something inherent to human beings”

The wealthy merchant Vicente Castillo was stabbed to death in his home in the centre of Madrid. Who was the person behind this horrible crime? Spain at the end of the 18th century turned pale with this cold-blooded murder in which the victim belonged to high society. The writer Rebeca Martín (León, 47 years old) recovers this case and many other sadly famous cases in her book Crimes proclaimed (Editorial Password) to describe what interested society at the time and conclude that it is not so different from today.

This doctor in Philology and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona spent years delving into court archives, historical documents, newspaper archives from the 18th and 19th centuries, and even literary and pictorial works to write this work in which she not only recovers crime stories that had an impact on society at the time, but also to unravel the reasons that lead humans to kill. She was so involved that even her daughters learned the names of the murderers and their victims.

Its pages also reflect the excessive interest that events have always generated, as well as the journalistic debate about where the limits are.

Ask. Castillo’s murder is a clear example of how mixing crime and high society always generates tremendous fascination, yesterday and today.

AnswerCrimes that are close to power have a special attraction effect. The merchant Castillo belonged to high society, he supplied various materials to the court, the army… And the instigator of it all ended up being his wife. This attracted the public a lot, as it still does today. All this is mixed with gossip and rumours, which continue to be circulated, as if the atrocity of the crime were not enough. The tendency towards conspiracy was already very present at that time.

P. In the book you say that the first Spanish newspaper dedicated to the activity of the courts dates back to 1834. Does this show that interest in crime reporting has always existed?

RYes, that’s right. I think that killing and narrating are inherent to human beings and, of course, the union of both things results in stories of real crimes. We are especially interested in those that have to do with low passions, more than, for example, economic issues.

P. What documentation did you use to write about the cases and their impact?

R. Very abundant. Of course, the court records when possible. In the case of Castillo, the records of the declaration were lost, but the speeches of the prosecution and defense, the letters from the mother of the accused, did remain… I have also gone to the medical reports, of course to the news from the press of the time, but I have also given a lot of importance to the literary representations. For example, there is a verse about Castillo’s crime that says: “If Castillo doesn’t come to the square / women can now kill their husbands“This piece attests to the impatience there was to see the accused executed.

The tendency towards conspiracies was already very present at the time

P. His research includes such important names as Goya, Emilia Pardo Bazán and Benito Pérez Galdós. They were also chroniclers of events.

R. Goya was very interested in Castillo’s case, because it is assumed that they were friends and he even painted a portrait of the widow in jail, later executed for the murder. It must be acknowledged that, in Spain, the interest of the great writers in criminal cases came late, because we find mostly popular literature, with serials. But already in the Restoration both Emilia Pardo Bazán and Benito Pérez Galdós showed a fervent interest in the criminal phenomenon. Pérez Galdós wrote chronicles about the trial of the priest Galeote in 1886 – for the shooting of the bishop of Madrid – and in 1888 he dedicated some chronicles to the crime in Fuencarral Street, a case that drove the public crazy.

P. He even transferred it to literature.

R. He attended several sessions of the oral and public trial, even sketched a pictorial portrait of Higinia Balaguer, the accused and convicted, and visited her in prison several times. Pérez Galdós dignified all this in two novels entitled The Unknown and Realityin which the crime of Fuencarral has a lot to do, so that there is a conjunction between the occult and the popular.

P. There is a recurring debate in the press about which lines should not be crossed when reporting a crime. Was this discussion taking place at the time you investigated?

R. Many of the controversies that are still going on today were already taking place in one way or another at that time. In fact, in the ephemeral publications, crimes of all kinds were recounted, the judicial processes, the punishments they received… there was no hesitation in resorting to the gruesome and the morbid. The crimes were described in great detail. What happens is that, at that time, they had a moral alibi, they hid behind the fact that they wanted to show the public the punishment that this type of practice had.

During the Restoration period, both Emilia Pardo Bazán and Benito Pérez Galdós showed a fervent interest in the criminal phenomenon.

P. Recently, we heard the complaint from the mother of the child Gabriel Cruz, who asked for respect for the victims of violent deaths and their families. This demand is not new.

R. This is what happened with the case of Pedro Fiol, one of my favourites. It takes place in Barcelona in the mid-19th century: a triple homicide committed by a man from a powerful environment. The victims’ relatives complain that the press shows an astonishing respect for the identity of the murderer and does not go into detail on certain aspects as it did in other cases. At the same time, data is provided about the deceased that does not correspond to reality. The relatives asked for respect for the memory of their loved ones and demanded that they not be re-victimised.

P. The cases chosen are very different. There is a sexist crime, one committed by a mentally ill person, an infanticide… The story of these crimes also allows him to address many other aspects and not just the crime itself.

R. It clearly shows how crime appears in a setting where many social tensions are also represented. I wanted to write an essay on cultural history and deal with other aspects, such as slavery, mental health, the ideal concept of marriage at the end of the 18th century and what was really behind it, the situation of women in rural Galicia… There is even a case, that of Luna, with which I have also been able to address the separation of the concept of a brilliant painter from the act he committed – he shot his wife and mother-in-law in Paris in 1892. The cases are chosen for that, to be able to address issues that in my opinion are essential in the society and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries.

P. And gender-based violence also appears.

R. The archives of the time attest to the fact that there were women who denounced their husbands, but there was a premise that what happened at home, stayed at home. Even so, there were complaints and when the mistreatment was proven by the doctors, the judges allowed the separation, but tried to invite the couple to reconcile. At first, my intention was to deal with the issue of gender violence in the case of the painter Luna, but I realized that violence against women was actually very present in all of them. In the case of Romasanta, a serial killer, his lawyer claims in his defense that the women h
e had killed were “given over to the bad life.”