[Andrea and Erica singing]: All the promises of my love will go with you. (Laughs) You’ll forget me.

Isabel: Hello everyone. This is De eso no se habla.

Andrea: Isabel, if later this doesn’t work for you when putting it together, think that we’ve done it with all the love in the world. I mean, I write this stuff, I don’t know how to record things.

Isabel: You’re listening to Erica and Andrea, the protagonists of this story.

Erica: And I don’t know what I’m doing here… being the granddaughter.

Isabel: And although it may seem unbelievable, a year ago when we started this, they didn’t know each other.

Andrea: Come on.

The story begins with an anecdote told in a bar. It is told by Erica.

Erica: And we were going to Madrid to shop at El Corte Inglés with my great-grandmother’s card, and my great-grandmother had to provide authorization. Authorization…

Isabel: An authorization so that her grandmother, Loli, could use the card. The great-grandmother’s card. But it wasn’t that simple.

Erica: And then they tell me: no, because the authorization cannot be given to grandma because she doesn’t have an ID card. And I was like, “well, then she should go to the police station and get an ID.” “No, well, she can’t and that’s it.” And then I noticed that I couldn’t talk about it anymore.

[Theme music]

Isabel: Like all our stories, this is the story of a silence. One that lasted many years. Until one day, Erica dared to ask what happened with her grandmother Loli’s ID.

Erica: And then my mother told me. Well, the thing is, when grandma left Madrid, she spent a long time in Bilbao. And well, she was in jail and then got out on parole and never returned. And so, she’s been wanted ever since. And I was like… (Laughs)

Isabel: Loli, Erica’s grandmother, passed away in 2012, and there were many questions that Erica had never been able to ask her. And the being wanted was, in reality, the least of it.

The question behind that ID anecdote was where her grandmother had been for 20 years. Why, one day, she left home, leaving her two-year-old daughter without any explanation. Where she was. And what she did. But above all, always, why. Whether she had abandoned them…

Erica: I always knew that my grandmother abandoned my mom.

Isabel: Whether she had to leave…

Woman: But what happened to her?

Isabel: And why she never explained anything.

Woman: She never told me she had a daughter, never.

Isabel: This podcast is the story of those questions.

Erica: How?

Man: Who?

Isabel: And like every story about a question, it’s above all, the story of a search.

[Andrea]: Is there someone she would have spent time with, do you remember anyone?

[Erica]: I’m super nervous. A man called me… Hello? Is this really happening?

[Man]: Third floor, door C.

[Erica]: I’m very excited too.

Isabel: And it’s also a story of stigmas. Stigmas within a family—the grandmother who was in jail, the grandmother with a troubled life. And social stigmas: the woman with a troubled life, the lunatic.

[Woman]: I saw a lot of money in that house, a lot of money.

[Man]: That taboo that you have, we also have it.

[Woman]: She didn’t respect any authority and always did whatever she pleased…

Isabel: This is the story of how that question and those stigmas, marked three generations of women up to this day.

[Music]

Isabel: Welcome to “Lunáticas.” A series by De eso no se habla and Producciones del KO.

[Music: Lunáticas, lunáticas, lunatica]

Isabel: This is Episode one: They called her Loli.

[Music: LU-NA-TI-CAS]

Isabel: Erica is 33 years old. She’s a social worker, an only child, and lives in Madrid, very close to her mother’s house.

She reads a lot. One day, she reads “Lunática”, a book about María Isabel Gutiérrez, a 23-year-old woman who worked as a prostitute in Bilbao and died in a fire in the Basauri prison, in my hometown, in 1977.

The author of the book is Andrea Momoitio, a journalist who is also 33 years old, like Erica, who lives in Bilbao and is so obsessed with María Isabel’s story that she has a photo of her as her computer wallpaper.

For Erica, María Isabel’s story reminds her a lot of her grandmother’s.

Erica: I don’t have words to describe what this book has made me feel.

Isabel: So when she finishes reading the book, she writes this Twitter thread:

Erica: Thank you, Andrea Momoitio. Thank you, María Isabel. Thank you, Lunática.

Isabel: To thank them, the author, the protagonist, and the book.

Erica: Thank you for bringing me closer.

Isabel: Like throwing a bottle into the sea.

Erica: I couldn’t help but wonder, where would she have been that year? Would that be the prison my mother visited her at? Would she coincide with María Isabel working in Bilbao?

Isabel: On the other end, Andrea picks up the bottle. She spends a lot of time on social media and there’s nothing she likes more than an open question. So Andrea resplies instantly. And on that same day, they exchange numbers and start talking on WhatsApp.

[WhatsApp voice messages between Andrea and Erica]

Andrea: Hi Erica. One thing. For some time I’ve been looking for a way to turn “Lunática” into a podcast, but we haven’t quite found the right voice.

We’d been trying for a long time. To make a podcast about “Lunática” between DESNH and the publishing house’s production company, Producciones del KO. But as Andrea says, nothing quite fit.

Erica: Oh, Andrea, this is pure magic. Just this afternoon, my partner Dani and I were discussing the possibility of making a podcast about this.

Neither of us knew that Erica and Dani, her boyfriend, were thinking the same thing we were.

Andrea: Maybe it could be about starting from “Lunática,” a new quest, a story that surely has many similarities.

Isabel: So, after that Twitter thread and these voice messages…

Érica: It’s been really nice to listen to you, truly.

Isabel: We got to work. We created a WhatsApp group to get organized and help Erica and Andrea in their research. And also to remind them that, yes, they had to record everything. Because this is a story recorded by a social worker with no journalistic experience…

Erica: I think I’m recording without… well…

Isabel: But eager to learn.

Erica: I just don’t know how to do this.

And by a print journalist…

Andrea: Hi Erica. Sending you this audio because Isabel won’t let us text each other.

Isabel: Even willing to stop writing.

Andrea: So I’m sending you this audio now.

Isabel: Obviously, nothing could go wrong.

[Music]

Isabel: In one of those first audios that Erica sends to Andrea, there’s a phrase that at the time didn’t seem important to me, but now I think it speaks volumes about what the process of this podcast was going to be. It’s this one:

Erica: It’s crazy. Yes, it’s true that at first I see it as a personal quest, but for me, a podcast or something like that makes sense…

Isabel: Erica, in this serious tone, says yes, she wants to do the podcast, but she also warns, “I see it as a personal search.” Because, of course, Erica wasn’t sure if she wanted to expose her family life in a podcast. And it wasn’t about her. It was mostly about her mother, Conchi.

When Conchi had Erica in 1989, she had already spent almost 20 years without seeing her mother, Loli. It had been 20 years since Loli had left their home in Madrid, and she barely had any contact with the family.

For Erica, growing up without her grandmother was normal. Her grandmother had simply never been there. But her mother, Conchi, never got used to that absence.

As Erica grew older, she realized she had grown up with all that inherited pain, and she hadn’t known.

Erica: Oh, sorry, it’s just that…

Isabel: That pain was always part of the project. In the recordings, in the silences, in the warnings, in the hesitations.

Erica: But it’s true with my mother… it stirs up even more complex issues for her. You can imagine…

Isabel: Because sometimes, Erica’s mother, Conchi, can’t talk about her own mother, Loli, without bursting into tears. Absences leave many marks, especially when they lack explanation.

Erica: So, of course, I want to take things slowly in some way because, well, for me, of all the people who might be affected by me opening this topic…

Isabel: But the investigation started progressing very soon. A few days after that Twitter thread and several WhatsApp conversations, Andrea found the first document.

Erica: Then the author replied to me and then she asks me, “Can you give me your grandmother’s name?”

Isabel: And then Erica had to explain to her mother.

Erica: I told her Manuela Martín Quijada. And she found something in the Official Gazette of Santander from 1972.

Conchi: 67, 68, 70. 70, 71. I was five, five years old.

Erica: Five years old.

Isabel: And when she saw that her mother was listening, Erica decided to read her the document.

Erica: “Having reviewed the ongoing proceedings in accordance with the Law and Regulation of Social Danger and Rehabilitation…”

Isabel: Social Danger, it’s the Law of Social Danger. It was a law created in 1970, during the Franco regime, to persecute what the regime considered “vagrants and troublemakers” and what was now termed “socially dangerous”, those who deviated from the norms of national Catholicism: homosexuals, beggars, illegal immigrants, and of course, prostitutes.

Erica: Single. With a five-year-old daughter she has with her parents in Madrid. Of normal constitution and without any physical or mental defect or organic illness. Lately, she has been engaged in prostitution, lacking other sources of income than what she obtains from the carnal trade with her own body.

Isabel: Conchi and Erica already knew that Loli had been a prostitute. They also knew she had been in jail. Those were the main reasons behind the family stigma. But there were other things in that document they were reading for the first time.

Conchi: She was in Santander…

Isabel: “She was in Santander,” says Conchi.

Conchi: (almost unintelligible) I didn’t know that…

Isabel: “But I didn’t know that,” she says about her own mother.

Two days after that conversation, while mother and daughter were having lunch at a restaurant, Conchi didn’t want to remember anymore.

Conchi: It’s better, I prefer not to dwell on it too much, if not… my head starts to hurt… Because it’s very intense and it hurts too… and it brings back memories

Erica: Of course…

Isabel: But Erica wanted to continue investigating.

Conchi: I don’t like it, you know…

Isabel: What little she knew about her grandmother was that when she disappeared from Madrid, she had been lost for a while and eventually settled in Bilbao. She also knew she had lived there for many years. So that was the natural place to continue investigating. That, and finally meeting Andrea in person, of course. So, without giving too much detail to her mother, saying she was going north to see the sea, Erica got on a bus heading to Bilbao.

Isabel: How do you feel?

Andrea: Well, a bit nervous…

Isabel: Andrea and I met a little earlier at the Abando station. I wanted to record their encounter.

Erica: This is intense! I’m really nervous…

Isabel: They had been talking almost daily for a few months, but at first, there was an uncomfortable silence that we soon filled with something we all had in common at that time: María Isabel, the protagonist of Andrea’s book.

Andrea: Look, this is where María Isabel stole for the last time.

Erica: Oh, really?

Andrea: Yes, in this El Corte Inglés. When they took her, it was because she stole from here…

Isabel: Andrea has been living in Bilbao for 15 years.

Andrea: When they gave me the report on what she had stolen, she had gone floor by floor and taken everything (laughs).

Isabel: But in reality, years don’t say much. Few people know Bilbao better than Andrea. Especially that neighborhood, San Francisco, and that street she’s leading us to, Cortes.

Andrea: Shall we go to Cortes?

Erica: Let’s go. Yeah.

Isabel: It’s the neighborhood where Andrea lives, where Maria Isabel lived, and apparently, where Erica’s grandmother also lived.

Andrea loves talking about Maria Isabel. I think she would agree if I said that Maria Isabel became an obsession for her.

[In the background, Andrea talking]

Andrea: I tried to find out if it was already in ’77 because I was thinking, how did Maria Isabel get to El Corte Inglés? And I couldn’t find out, nobody could tell me.

Isabel: She spent almost six years investigating that woman who, at 23, died in a fire in a Basauri prison, and initially, all she knew about her was what was said about her in the neighborhood: that she was crazy, a woman with a troubled life, a lunatic. But nothing more. No one who knew her personally, no documents that told something about her life.

Or so it seemed at first, because later Andrea was able to reconstruct her life mainly based on police files and walking around the neighborhood, San Francisco.

Andrea: Well, this is a neighborhood that people think is super special, but it’s just the typical neighborhood you find everywhere with immigration, bars…

Isabel: Like in many other neighborhoods, in San Francisco, or San Fran, today you find halal butchers, old-time bars, and new businesses that raise the rent when they take over.

Andrea: This is the first sex shop that opened in Bilbao.

Isabel: And to fully understand this story, you need to know about three streets in that neighborhood.

The first two run parallel: Cortes Street and San Francisco Street. Cortes is the street of prostitution. It was much more so in the past, but it still is today.

Andrea: There must have been like 50 or 60 clubs on this little street

Erica: Wow, of course.

Isabel: San Francisco is the main street in the neighborhood, hence its name. Both an be walked from end to end in about five minutes. The third is La Laguna streets, which intersects the other two and lasts only two blocks.

Andrea: Cortes has changed.

Isabel: Erica walked with us with her eyes wide open. For us, these streets are familiar, but not for her. Although it’s not just that: I think she looked at the streets as if she were searching for a ghost.

Erica: It’s weird, to stop and think, would she be here? It’s like a constant, would she be here? Would she go to that place?

Isabel: What would you like to happen today?

Erica: Well, on one hand, I think it would be cool, since Andrea knows a lot of people, to find someone who actually remembered her. But on the other hand, it would frustrate me, finding those people, maybe not having a clear photo to confirm, right? Because the photos I have…

Isabel: The issue of the photos has been a constant in this search. By the time Erica and Andrea met in person, they had been exchanging messages for months. The first thing Andrea asked Erica to start the investigation was a photo of Loli. But after several weeks of searching, Erica had only found three photos, and none showed her clearly.

Andrea: Maybe this one?

Erica: I think that one could be the most…

Isabel: Loli is always in the background, like here, sitting in a cloth chair, very blonde with short hair. You can barely see her facial features.

That’s the photo Erica and Andrea have in their hands now as we head to one of the most important places in this story.

Andrea: I’m not quite sure where to start. Maybe let’s go to Olga’s…

Isabel: Olga’s bar.

Andrea: Let’s see if it’s open. There it is, there she is at the door.

Isabel: Olga, the owner, is short and slender. But at first, she’s a bit intimidating. If you’re with Andrea, it’s easier, she welcomes you right away.

Andrea: Olga, egun on! (Good morning!)How are you?

Olga: Very well.

Andrea: We’re recording. Do you mind? I’ll tell you now. Do you remember the other day I sent you a photo of Loli? Well, she’s her granddaughter. And we’re trying to see if there’s someone who might know her, but I’m not sure where to start…

Isabel: In her book, “Lunática,” Andrea recounts that Olga inherited the bar from her father about 30 years ago. And being hers, one day, a bus jumped the curb and tore off the sign with the name. And they never put it back.

Because after all everyone knows where the bar is and who Olga is.

On the street, several girls are sitting at the door, chatting among themselves. The bar is a resting place and meeting spot for several prostitutes in the area, both the younger ones and those who have been working there for many decades. That’s why Olga was able to help Andrea so much with the “Lunática” investigation. And that’s why we’re here.

Erica: My grandmother left my mother in Madrid when she was born and left Madrid.

Isabel: Olga looks at her, nods, listens, and remains silent. Andrea asks for more details.

Andrea: Not so many. What year was she here?

Erica: I’m sure she was here in ’89. ’89, ’90 for sure.

Isabel: More silence and Erica explains further.

Erica: For many years, I’ve had the idea of trying to learn more about my grandmother because I believe the memory that has been kept of her is a bit distorted. Reading the book made me realize that I had to find more people who knew my grandmother, to learn more about her. That’s why I’m here in Bilbao.

Olga: Everyone has the right to know their origins, right?

Isabel: “Everyone has the right to know their origins,” says Olga as she takes a pen.

Olga: If I were in the same situation, I would want to know too, right? Tell me your name.

Erica: I’m Erica.

Olga: Erica.

Erica: Erica Santillán. And my grandmother… Yes. And my grandmother’s name was Manuela Martín Quijada. Yes, but they called her Loli.

Isabel: Olga takes note of the name and a woman appears at the door. Olga greets her and gestures to speak with her.

Haidresser: Hello, good morning.

Isabel: “It won’t be on TV, will it?” she asks us.

Olga: No, no, no.

Erica: Just the voice…

Olga: To see if you know this woman or have known her.

Isabel: Olga wants us to talk to that woman because she’s also from the same neighborhood and works as a hairdresser, and many of her clients are or have been prostitutes.

Andrea: Her grandmother lived here for a long time, and we’re looking for someone who might have known her.

Olga: She’s the granddaughter!

Andrea: Her name was Loli.

Isabel: They show her the photo. Loli, blonde and in the background.

Hairdresser: Oh, yes. That’s Loli. What was her name?

Isabel: Suddenly, someone who knew her.

Hairdresser: But she’s not here…

Andrea: No, she’s already passed away…

Olga: She’s her granddaughter.

Hairdresser: What did you want to know?

Andrea: Well, someone who knew her…

Hairdresser: Yes, but I don’t remember much about her now.

Isabel: Nothing.

Erica: Did she go to your hair salon?

Isabel: She didn’t remember.

Hairdresser: Yes, yes, she used to come. So many girls have passed through. But I usually remember the faces.

Isabel: Andrea asks how she used to wear her hair.

Hairdresser: She had it in a medium bob.

Andrea: Blonde too?

Hairdresser: Yes, she dyed it…

Andrea: Did you do her highlights?

Hairdresser: No. But I do know her.

Isabel: And she asks if she thinks there’s still anyone in the neighborhood who might know her.

Andrea: Any place? Do you remember any name?

Hairdresser: No.

Andrea: And someone she used to go out with, do you remember her with someone?

Hairdresser: The ones who used to come,they’re not here anymore.

Andrea: Do you know which club she worked at?

Hairdresser: They didn’t have one. They were on the street…

Andrea: But some may be linked to a club…

Hairdresser: Yes, some were in the Acapulco, which doesn’t exist. All the bars that were here are closed. The girls and all, gone.

Isabel: As she says this, she looks down the street, as if remembering where each closed bar was and each girl that left. And beside her, Olga does the same.

Olga: Most of them have passed away, others left, others are in retirement homes… No, no… I don’t know… and then, well, memory.

Isabel: Before leaving, the hairdresser asks again.

Hairdresser: Why do you want to know, dear?

Olga: Because she’s her granddaughter…

Isabel: “To know”, Olga says. “Out of curiosity”, Andrea says.

Olga: That’s it

Hairdresser: Well, she was a very special woman, so whatever they tell you is a lie.

Erica: Thank you very much, see you!

Isabel: “She was a very kind woman, so whatever they tell you is a lie.”

Olga: Alright, girls, bye!

Andrea and Erica: Thank you, agur!

Isabel: The conversation with the hairdresser was a bit strange, and all three of us noticed it. But Andrea and I remained silent until Erica finally starts to speak.

Erica: I find it super curious… I think the lady was really concerned that I might have a bad memory. It’s like, it’s not a lie, she was arrested and she was in jail for that…

Andrea: She was even worried, right? She didn’t want to say she was a prostitute. That’s why I told her, we already know.

Isabel: While we were at Olga’s bar, Erica had received a call from her mother, but hadn’t answered it.

Erica: I’m going to call my mother, let’s see…

Isabel: Now she prepares herself.

Erica: Hi, Mom, I couldn’t pick up. I’m in Bilbao. Yes, I’m around here, kind of exploring.

Isabel: After that day when her mother asked her not to talk about it anymore, Erica had barely told about the investigation.

Erica: With the journalist, yes.

Isabel: But now…

Erica: Yes, I’m with Andrea.

Isabel: Now, Conchi wanted to know.

Erica: Well, yes, I’ll tell you. Big kiss, Mom. Yes, I’ll give Andrea your kisses. Alright, see you later. Goodbye.

Isabel: But Erica didn’t want to tell her like this, in the middle of the street. She preferred to wait and see her in person.

Erica: It’s a bit like… She wants to know. And lately, I’m noticing that sometimes she gets very nervous or “oh, I don’t know, daughter… I don’t know, all this stirs me up a lot” and so on. But then there are other moments of… Because, of course, what she’s been told her whole life is that her mother abandoned her, yes, but maybe there’s an important context there to understand what led my grandmother to make that decision or if it was her decision at all, maybe it wasn’t even her decision.

Isabel: And Erica had a lot to tell her mother about. The first person we asked on the street knew Loli, had styled her hair, almost done her highlights. In other words, she attested that her grandmother, Loli, had been there.

We wanted to keep up the good momentum. Olga told us about Feli. Feli almost surely knows her, she said.

Andrea: Hi, Feli, it’s Andrea…

Isabel: But nothing.

Feli: Well, the face is not unknown to me, of course, but…

Isabel: We also asked people of her age on the street. But no luck.

Isabel: Before arriving in Bilbao, Erica had managed to find out where Loli had been registered. The apartment was in the neighborhood, very close to La Laguna street, and we went to ring the bell, hoping for some luck.

[Intercom buzzes]

Man: Who is it?

Andrea: Hi, excuse me, we’re looking for a woman who used to live…

Isabel: But there was no one in 3C.

Andrea: And how long have you been living here? Do you know of anyone…

Isabel: We spent a lot of time in that entrance. I think we met all the neighbors, but no one could tell us who lived in that apartment, nor did anyone remember a blonde woman who had lived there how many years ago? We didn’t even know that. When did Loli leave Bilbao?

[Intercom buzzes]

Isabel: From that first trip to Bilbao, we took away many things. On one hand, Olga had already started asking her contacts. And on the other hand, we realized a few things. One was that if we wanted to keep asking around the neighborhood, we needed a photo where Loli was clearly visible. There was still a lot to ask, but maybe we had to find another way to do it.

The other thing that became clear was that Erica would have to start investigating on her own.

Erica: What I’m thinking is if I talk to someone…

Isabel: I haven’t mentioned this until now, but in the meetings we had to advance the investigation, there were usually moments like this.

Erica: I think… I don’t know… Maybe trying directly… I think to her sister… Or my aunt, or calling both of them at the same time, calling my aunt first…

Isabel: Erica always tried to delay the moment of calling her family.

Erica: I don’t know, it’s all these catastrophic options that come to mind when there’s something that makes you nervous, well, that’s what happens to me with my family.

Isabel: We all knew perfectly well what it was that made her so nervous. Specially her.

Erica: To think of an interview or something… In the end I have grown up with that silence, right? So I know that I am constantly in a struggle, even if I think about it and reason it, I want to uncover the silence. But in the end, there’s a part of me that’s saying, ‘Why are you going to bring this up? What for?’

Isabel: But after that first search in Bilbao, Erica made progress. She bought a mic for her phone, that she named ‘plushie’.

Conchi: How cool!

Isabel: And not only that. She used it for the first time with her mother, who by now had fewer and fewer days of not wanting to remember and more of wanting to find out about her daughter’s investigation.

Conchi: Well, you’re becoming quite an investigator.

Erica: An investigator?

Conchi: Let’s see how it sounds…

Erica: Well, let’s see…

Isabel: Conchi was so eager to cooperate that she and Erica agreed to visit Merce, Conchi’s aunt, Loli’s only sister, the owner of all the family photographs. The only one who could provide them with a better photo of Loli, and also, a lot of information.

Erica: Don’t touch it.

Conchi: (Laughs) I love it.

Erica: I’m prepared. Mom, because they told me that it’s very interesting to hear the actions as well. Now…

Isabel: But none of them had told Merce that this podcast existed. So, as soon as Merce opened the door of her house, Erica turned off Peluchito.

[Doorbell rings. Merce opens the door]

Isabel: It was a gesture of love towards the podcast, that gesture of carrying the recorder to the door. We had told Erica to record everything, everything, everything, even the sounds of the doors. Especially, in fact, the sounds of the doors. And also, later, if she couldn’t record, to tell us everything in an audio. That’s why, the next day…

Erica: Hi! How are you?

Isabel: She sent this audio to the WhatsApp group we had created for the project.

Erica: Yesterday, I went to my aunt’s house in the village, my grandmother’s sister. I saw loads of family photos and…

Isabel: One of those photos is from 1963. Loli is 17 years old and has been named the ‘Miss’ of the Madrid neighborhood where she lives, Moratalaz. She’s smiling, looking at the camera. The other two photos are from the mid-80s. Twenty years have passed, and Loli already seems like a different woman, an exhausted woman.

Erica: I saw loads of photos, but there are few of her… and especially, there are quite few from that time…

Isabel: Erica also sounds tired. Even somewhat sad, despite the good news. We have more photos and they’te better. But the visit to Loli’s sister reminds her of something: she is treading on dangerous ground in her family.

Erica: The thing is that my aunt barely speaks. I mean, especially not about my grandmother. She answered a bit like that, with monosyllables or ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember, it’s been a long time’, you know?

Isabel: But in reality, many things had changed. Suddenly, there they were, Conchi and Erica, mother and daughter, asking about Loli to her own sister. Additionally, the photos were good, and we thought they would be useful on our second trip to Bilbao. But this time, we weren’t going to improvise.

[Music]

Isabel: We decided to hold a public event. To announce to the neighborhood that we were looking for Loli. And after thinking about places for a long time, suddenly we knew that we had to do it at Olga’s bar, of course. Erica designed a poster with the best photos of her grandmother. The poster said:

Erica: ‘30 years after this photo, I’m looking for the trace my grandmother left here. Can you help me?’

Isabel: And then, in big letters, a title:

Isabel and Erica: LOOKING FOR LOLI

Isabel: She also put her phone number.

Andrea and I printed 100 copies, and one afternoon, we plastered the neighborhood. If anyone knew something, they had to come to Olga’s bar on October 22nd.

[Isabel]: Look, people are coming. Yes, we just started. I don’t know if you want to get closer. If you’re fine there, that’s okay. We’re talking into the mics because we’re recording this. I said “this” a bit deliberately, because we’re not sure what “this” is…

Isabel: That day, there were people who came to the bar to find out if this was real or a fiction show.

[Isabel]: But this is real. Andrea’s book, of course, is real, and Erica’s plea for help is also real.

Isabel: And we started.

Erica: I had always known that my grandmother had abandoned my mother.

Isabel: Erica recounted what she knew about her grandmother.

Erica: And that she had always done whatever she wanted.

Isabel: Andrea compared this search with the search for María Isabel.

Andrea: It’s really curious, right? Because they coincide in places… Not respecting any authority. María Isabel never respected any authority, any rule, she broke them all and escaped from everywhere… A man stepped on her once, so she grabbed a bottle, broke it on his face… Or another one told her… I mean, she didn’t respect any authority and always did whatever she wanted, which also reminds us a bit of what they say about your grandmother.

Isabel: And occasionally, I offered the microphone to people from the audience to see if anyone had come there to give us information about Loli.

[Isabel]: When they were talking about the parallels between them. I saw you making faces…

Isabel: But no one dared to speak up.

But at the end of the event, something happened that we didn’t know at that moment but later we would think about a lot.

[Olga]: Because I believe, from what I’ve read in Andrea’s book, Isabel was more…

Isabel: Olga started talking from behind the bar.

[Olga]: She turned to easy theft, right? At El Corte Inglés, at the other places, and from what I’m hearing around the streets about Loli…

Isabel: It turns out Olga had been investigating on her own.

[Olga]: So, I think she was more connected with the drug world, so I don’t know if there was something that linked them.

Isabel: At that moment, none of us paid much attention to what Olga was saying. But later, it became something very important in this story. That, in the next episode.

[Música]

[Isabel]: Thank you, Erica, for daring to do this. The number is there…

[Andrea]: Yes, we continue searching.

[Isabel]: Thank you very much!

[Applause]

Isabel: A few days after the event, Erica received a call.

Erica: Girl, I’m super nervous.

Isabel: The call caught her in the middle of the street, and she couldn’t record, but as soon as she hung up, she sent an audio message to Andrea.

Erica: A man who saw the posters called me, and well, at first, he wasn’t sure what it was about, and he didn’t do anything. But when they told him that indeed, she is Loli’s granddaughter and is looking for information about her grandmother, well, he said that he knew her…

Isabel: Erica got so nervous that she didn’t know how that man knew her grandmother.

Erica: …That information, but well. At least the posters and the hard work you did putting them up served for something.

[Theme music]

Isabel: The next day, Erica prepared herself and called. And this time, yes, she was recording it.

[Phone ringing]

Man: Hello.

Erica: Hi!

Man: Ah, I had a missed call from you.

Erica: Yes, yes. Well, after yesterday’s call. Well, sorry because it caught me a bit off guard…

Isabel: The call is long, but basically, that man talks about his mother, Vera. It seems that Loli and Vera were friends.

Man: The latest news, from what my mother told me, is that she got married and went to Madrid.

Isabel: And that’s why he knows her.

Erica: No, she didn’t get married.

Man: That’s what my mother had told me.

Erica: She left Madrid…

Isabel: In the next episode, Erica meets with that man and discovers a part of her grandmother’s past that she didn’t even suspect.

Erica: It’s a bit of a taboo in the family…

Man: That taboo you have, is the same one we have in mine and in everyone who has lived in this neighborhood. So, we can talk about it calmly, because we’re already in 2021 and no one needs to make a big deal of anything.

[Theme music]