Witches of Epila: last executions for witchcraft in Spain

Between 1629 and 1651 the then Earl ArandaAntonio Jimenez de Urrea, undertook in the Aragonese cities epila D Almonacid de la Sierra (North) a brutal witch-hunt culminating in the torture, humiliation and execution of several women, recognized as servants of the devil by various signs interpreted by their judges as diabolical.

A history sunk in the waters of oblivion and restored by a historian and researcher Carlos Garces in his bookWitches and Countess. Hunt for women in Epile and Almonasid, as well as for the witches of Trasmos.’, a fascinating story based on a careful search for surviving documents about these processes in the archives of Bordeaux (France) and in the Spanish archives of Lleida, Zaragoza and Huesca.

As the author explains in an EFE interview, this history textbook about the women who are on both sides of the board: falsely accused of being witches due to comments, rumors or evidence prepared on the one hand, and on the other, the Countess Aranda, Luisa de Padilla, the wife of the propagandist of these bloody trials and one of the most important writers of the 17th century.

In his new book, Garces talks about some women who carried on their backs fears and superstition a society that stripped them naked in search of the mark of the devil, that systematically tortured their bodies to force them to confess, and that finally executed them by hanging or burning.

Although some of them suggest witches they were acquitted or simply exiled, many others paid with their lives after countless hours of torment.

tortured

one of them was Ana Marcotried and executed in 1634 by order of a Capuchin friar who feigned “spells of vomiting” in the exorcism he was subjected to in order to get rid of the supposed diabolical influence of this woman, who was also held accountable for damaging fruits and crops and killing people and animals.

“To prevent her from being tortured again, Ana Marco began to attribute curses to herself and denounce other women as witches,” Garces says in her book, pointing out that this type of behavior had already been unleashed three years earlier, with another alleged demoniac named Luisa Nuella. , big witch hunt in the area.

The woman died in 1634 from a stranglehold, a fate similar to that which she experienced in 1629. Isabelle Alcaidewhose mistake was to talk to some of the co-workers about the damage the Counts of Aranda had done to her by expelling her from Epila.

Isabelle Alcaid died without confessing, despite some torture, which, according to the accusers, should have served the accused “in order to tell, declare and confess the deaths, evils and damages that she caused with her sorcery and spells in the city of Epila and other places and parts of the real kingdom, as well as people, animals and crops.

Torture and death were also received in these processes. Louise Nuella, Gracia Gascon and Maria Viscarretahanged in Epile in 1651 and called by the author “the last woman executed in Aragon and Spain as a witch.”

Forty years after the famous Salem witchcraft episode (USA) and at a time when the witch hunt in Europe was coming to an end, Maria Viscarretaa midwife by profession, was accused of witchcraft and the murder of an almost two-year-old boy and the newborn son of Judge Lumpiaksky.

Despite the fact that the protocol of the trial has not been preserved, a note prepared by a lawyer from Zaragoza At the request of the Count of Aranda, he reveals some clues to the trial.

“Válgate el diablo, how beautiful you are” are the words that the 19-month-old boy’s father said viscarreta his son while he raised him and gave him various parties.

The death of the child a little later and other spells imputed to him finally decided the fate of this woman, on whose back the judges found, after washing him with holy water, a mark resembling a claw or paw, which, according to the accusers, was the mark of the devil. Maria Viscarreta was publicly hanged in epila in April 1651

“One of the factors behind the interest in the book is that witches are still part of popular culture,” he says. garsfor which a large number of clichés, if not lies, continue to operate about these characters, which history books like mine should try to dispel as far as possible.

(As reported by EFE)