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Elena de Céspedes

Agustín Sánchez Vidal WRITER "Elena de Cespedes was a hermaphrodite, mulatto and slave, a character is found only once in a lifetime"

Agustín Sánchez Vidal

chanced the true story of a character any novelist would rub their hands. Elena de Cespedes, and Elena, was a hermaphrodite who lived in the sixteenth century, a mulatto persecuted and accused of lesbianism in court MARY R. ARANGUREN - Monday, March 8, 2010 - Updated at 07:34 pm

BILBAO. Agustín Sánchez Vidal is a professor emeritus at the University of Zaragoza, where he received his doctorate with a thesis on Miguel Hernandez, and has taught both in English Literature and Film and other media. Film and television writer, has collaborated with directors such as Carlos Saura.

¿Cómo se encontró con esta magnífica historia que relata en "Esclava de nadie"?

Fue una casualidad. En 1998 estaba preparando mi primera novela y necesitaba encontrar un juicio inquisitorial que transcurriera en Toledo y que sucediera aproximadamente en 1580. Acudí al Archivo Histórico Nacional de Madrid y ahí me encontré con este caso que no lo había buscado pero que me llamó muchísimo la atención. Dentro del propio proceso inquisitorial, el acusado o la acusada describe su vida. Cuando la leí pensé que algún día la convertiría en novela. ¿Fue una casualidad?

Sí, y esto es algo that happens once in life, because it is a character of such interest that it is logical that not only had engaged in a novel but several, or even a movie. It is a striking case that we all have in the head, the nun Catalina de Erauso, who was also a female soldier. Elena de Céspedes, also a soldier, was a surgeon and had sex with both men and women alike. What else had direct your life?

The fact that he was a hermaphrodite and is a remarkable fact but there are some additional features that make the most interesting, most controversial and dramatic. Conflict is the engine of all good history and this is a character who is born a slave. Interestingly, we bind ourselves to American slavery, the Uncle Tom's Cabin and perhaps even our own colonies, but not to the Peninsula. Elena de Céspedes was mulatto, the daughter of African slaves. Even her face marked with irons is not forget to whom it belonged. In addition, he lived in Alhama de Granada, a strategic enclave because it was where he passed the way from Granada to Malaga capital, so that Alhama was a redoubt in which there is a permanent war in which the Moors are very guarded. Besides looking Moorish and be a slave, when she gives birth to her first child, a change in your body very strong. She said that while she bore a child bore a penis, and it is true. From this fact, begins to have relationships with women.

a woman is constantly fighting for their freedom, was that current at the time?

was not running at all. At that time the woman had a very constrained freedom of movement. At the end of life is accused of lesbianism and she trying to show is that it is masculine attributes. She did not have a definite identity. There is a part of the book entitled La Frontera because she lives in Jerez de la Frontera, Arcos de la Frontera Morón de la Frontera, in cities that are so called because it is where stabilized the border between Moors and Christians. But I've only called a part so well, but because it is a circumstance that goes through his own identity. Where are the borders of Elena? That seems a lot harder.

What is documented in the archives to find exactly?

are verbatim transcripts of two trials in which several scribes. They are very thorough interrogation in which 200 people involved. The testimonies give you an incredible amount of detail, some very gory details. The sex of the woman is the one to determine the trial. To establish a sexual nature or character or another will depend sense that the prosecution, a charge very large because the sodomy or lesbianism were punishable by the stake, which was risking his life and that of his wife.

How does language?

For 20 years I was professor of literature and this forced me to read in a systematic way, something we only do the professionals. When you read systematically, generally follow a chronological order, so you know what the language of the time, you know what is due, you know if you have entered a string of Italian influence or a string of cultural influence that comes to the best of France. The year of birth of the star is 1545, year published

Lazarillo de Tormes, a cornerstone of the narrative not only English but also globally. It's the kind of reading that people were doing at the time in which it grows. Also, I had the great advantage of verbatim transcripts allowed me to listen to the characters. My task has been to calculate the extent to which modern readers would have trouble with certain words or constructions. In any case, Lazarillo de Tormes

not need footnotes to the page. The language is complicated after the Alfarache Guzman and

The Buscón

de Quevedo.

Is served from other sources?

There is a moment where the protagonist has to move between pimps and prostitutes, in the underworld, and there is a great novel that helped me a lot. This is the lush Andalusian

Francisco Delicado. In this work a prostitute listen to talk crudely about sex and other aspects. There are also three extraordinary authors who wrote about the war with the Moors. Ginés Pérez de Hita, who happens to be the inventor of the historical novel, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Marcol Carvajal. All three offer very precise details.

Is it a novel about identity?

That's the key. I think it would be a mistake find a case like and try to sharpen it, overdo it and go out to the reader with the most striking, the most flamboyant and lose sight that this is a person. If I had made that mistake, I think I have not committed, would have made Elena de Céspedes in a number of booth. Is mulatto, lives in an environment of Moors, is a hermaphrodite, the likes women, but behind all these circumstances there is a human being who looks for all people. In addition, at that time humanism has not yet been extinguished. Still thought that the fate of a person does not have to be in the hands of the gods, but in their own hands.

Has a responsibility to recreate this course story?

I enjoyed very much. You drop something like a lottery. What happens is that now too lazy to have to inventártelo everything. When you work in a real case is given you the whole story. Now too lazy to go out again in the open without some grips like these, and will have to be. Source