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ArribaAbajoIsidora, the Mantillas blancas, and the Attempted Assassination of Alfonso XII

Brian J. Dendle


On three occasions in La desheredada, Isidora reacts to events of national significance. Shortly after her father's death, Isidora is transported by the spectacle of the procession of the mantillas blancas in the Paseo de la Castellana. Her decision to lose her virtue is in part prompted by the news of Amadeo's abdication (and, to underline the national and personal degradation involved, Galdós has her offer herself to Joaquín Pez on the site of Prim's assassination). Finally, her abandonment of her aristocratic claims immediately follows the attempt by her brother Mariano on the life of Alfonso XII.

Galdós' account of the dual dishonor of Isidora and nation at the time of Amadeo's abdication demands of the reader no historical knowledge beyond that provided in the novel. To understand Galdós' treatment of the mantillas blancas and of the attempted assassination, on the other hand, requires a wider knowledge of these events than that provided in the text.


The mantillas blancas

In Part 4 of Chapter 4 («El célebre Miquis») of La desheredada, Isidora and Miquis come upon a procession of carriages approaching the Fuente Castellana. Miquis, the narrator tells us, sees «lo que todo el mundo ve»;103 Isidora, however, sees «algo más de lo que vemos todos», the external projection of her fantasies (p. 78). The two observe the cold reception afforded to King Amadeo. Miquis explains that the wearing of mantillas blancas is «una manifestación, una protesta contra el rey extranjero». At this point, Isidora firmly proclaims her confidence in the judgment of the aristocratic demonstrators: «-Esta gente -afirmó Isidora con mucho tesón- sabe lo que hace. Es la gente principal del país, la gente fina, decente, rica; la que tiene, la que puede, la que sabe» (p. 79).

Miquis and Isidora have, of course, witnessed one of the many demonstrations organized by the Spanish aristocracy in the spring of 1871 as a protest against Amadeo's monarchy. Noblewomen adopted the custom of parading in their carriages in the Paseo de la Castellana, ostentatiously flaunting «national» costumes (white or black mantillas, tortoiseshell combs and flowers in their hair) as a snub to El rey intruso.

For the modern reader, Isidora's enthusiastic embrace of the aristocratic cause merely betokens her noble pretensions. For Galdós and his contemporaries, however, the mantillas blancas could only be viewed in hindsight, in the light of the notorious incident which brought the demonstrations to an abrupt end. On a Sunday afternoon in late June 1871, Felipe Ducazcal, an   —52→   ardent amadeísta and organizer of the earlier partida de la porra, arranged for a number of carriages containing prostitutes, dressed in a caricature version of the national costume, to mingle with the procession of noblewomen.104 Ducazcal's gesture was striking enough to engrave itself on the national imagination. From that moment onwards, the parade of the mantillas blancas became inescapably associated in the popular mind with the grotesque intrusion of harlots. Isidora's adherence to the mantillas blancas would, to the reader of 1881, have immediately denoted her future fate. Isidora, in her unthinking enthusiasm, has chosen to identify herself not only with the aristocracy but also, indirectly, with prostitution.105

The association of Isidora and the mantillas blancas is a key element in the structure of the novel. To include the incident, Galdós was compelled to blur the dating of events in Part One of La desheredada. Historically, the demonstrations of the mantillas blancas came to an end in the summer of 1871. The events of Part One, on the other hand, take place in 1872 and early 1873.106 To avoid drawing attention to the fact that the procession of the mantillas blancas occurs one year later in the novel than was historically possible, Galdós indulges in a minor mystification of the reader, by suggesting, rather than specifying, dates for the action of most of Part One of the novel. Thus, he gives days of the week and months for early events in La desheredada (pp. 37, 60, 115, 129); the first mention of a year, however, occurs only with the visits to the Aransis palace, in the fall of 1872 (pp. 144, 172).

Galdós treated the mantillas blancas on two other occasions. In January 1872, Galdós, looking back at the events of the previous year and serving as a propagandist for Amadeo's regime, associated -as had been Ducazcal's intent and as Coloma was to charge later- the aristocratic protest with immorality:

el grupo moderado [...] halló en la inhumación de ciertos trajes españoles, pertenecientes a cierta época de desvergüenza e ignorancia que es página de rubor en nuestra historia, una fórmula de protesta contra la nueva dinastía. Pero aquella sátira de mal gusto produjo efecto bien distinto del que se proponían sus autores, los cuales no consiguieron sino poner en luz cosas que están mejor amparadas por la penumbra de la vida doméstica, y sugerir al público comparaciones nada favorables por cierto a personas y cosas justamente anatematizadas por la revolución.107



Many years afterwards, in Amadeo I (1910), Galdós returned to themes initiated in La desheredada. The bands of warring children, who in La desheredada represent the national propensity to civil war (pp. 94-95), are now approvingly hailed by Mariclío as learning the manly virtues of future citizens.108 In his treatment of the mantillas blancas, Galdós now stresses what he had left unstated in La desheredada: the intervention of the prostitutes. Tito Liviano and Felipe Ducazcal hire «dos docenas de mozas del partido» for a «graciosa mascarada que había de desvirtuar y corromper la manifestación de las católicas damas alfonsinas».109 Tito lists at length the names of mingled prostitutes and aristocrats (Amadeo I, pp. 272-73). Pepe Ferreras (Galdós' companion as journalist in El Debate and the Revista de España) energetically proclaims that the nation is degraded by the demonstration. He blames the upper classes for the intervention in politics of the dregs of the populace: «-No se concibe mayor oprobio de un país, ni mayor torpeza de las clases   —53→   altas, que nos han traído la intervención del fango social en la vida política» (Amadeo I, p. 273).




The Assassination Attempt

In Chapter 34 of La desheredada, Mariano Rufete, consumed by envy, reduced to a state of near idiocy by illness, and mysteriously provided with funds (p. 446), fires a pistol at a royal procession in the Calle Mayor. His target, although unnamed by the narrator, is obviously the monarch. (See pp. 450-51.) The date of the attempted regicide is some time in 1877. Later, at the beginning of Chapter 36 («Muerte de Isidora. Conclusión de los Rufetes»), la Sanguijuelera presents a plea for pardon to the King. The narrator explains: «La infeliz mujer, tan prendada de los poderes autoritarios, no sabía que el soberano tiene una esposa, la ley, y que, según el arreglo que hemos hecho, con el anillo nupcial de este himeneo se han de sellar lo mismo la sentencia que el perdón» (p. 472).

Galdós' fictitious account of Mariano's attempted regicide is loosely based on an attempt on the life of Alfonso XII some two and a half years before the composition of La desheredada. On October 25 1878, Juan Oliva, a young Catalan, fired at the monarch as the King passed in a royal procession in the Calle Mayor. Oliva claimed, falsely, to be a member of the International. At the hurried trial, the defense unsuccessfully alleged in mitigation the perturbed mental state of Oliva. Alfonso, it was widely rumored, wished to pardon Oliva. (He later awarded from his own purse a pension to Oliva's daughter.) Cánovas, however, insisted on Oliva's execution (January 4 1879).110

Galdós borrowed numerous features from the Oliva case for his account of Mariano's botched regicide: the attack in the Calle Mayor; the target is the monarch; a pistol is used; the assassin has Catalan and Anarchist connections and is mentally deranged; a royal pardon is sought but not granted.

Mariano's attempted regicide does not play as crucial a role in the structure of La desheredada as does Isidora's vision of the mantillas blancas. Mariano's crime marks the downward path of the Rufetes. It is the immediate, but not the principal, determinant in Isidora's decision to abandon her fantasies of nobility and, ultimately, to lose all notion of self in prostitution.

In La desheredada, Galdós stresses attitudes which will strengthen, rather than subvert, the established social order. He portrays the aristocracy without hostility: he avoids the overt accusations of immorality which he leveled against the mantillas blancas in the earlier Revista de España article and, later, in Amadeo I; the Marquesa de Aransis behaves with dignity and compassion toward Isidora. Galdós observes that the bands of warring children contain within themselves the seeds of future civil strife; he has only contempt for the methods of social advancement of the repulsive Sánchez Botín and Gaitica; Juan Bou's revolutionary ideals are absurdly simplistic slogans; Isidora destroys herself in an attempt to improve her social situation by means other than those of merit and work. In his portrayal of Alfonso's rejection of a pardon for Mariano, Galdós emphasizes the King's obedience to the law. The King, unlike Isidora, is bound by a social compact («el arreglo que hemos   —54→   hecho»); he cannot -and this is the lesson which Isidora fails to grasp in her own career- remake the world according to his fancy.

University of Kentucky





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