Hello everyone.

Conchi: Lovely to meet you!

It’s been more than a year since we started recording this podcast.

Isabel: You look beautiful.

Conchi: Thank you.

Since Erica barely knew what her mother had told her when she asked her why her grandmother didn’t have a DNI until she found out what she did in Bilbao, a lot of things have happened.

Isabel: You speak the same way.

Erica: Yes, that’s what they tell us.

There have been discoveries, reunions, some answers and many, many questions.

Conchi: I really wanted to meet you, Andrea, because Erica has told me so much about you.

And now the time has come to close this story.

Conchi: And then we can go for a beer or a glass of wine…

We started this investigation with a public event at Olga’s bar in Bilbao. And we have a very clear idea of how we want to end it.

Isabel: I want to know if Conchi is comfortable…

Around a table

Conchi: I’m nervous.

Bringing together its protagonists: Andrea, Erica, and above all Conchi.

Conchi: Shall I speak?

Erica’s mother, Loli’s daughter. In a certain sense, she has been the silent protagonist of this story.

Isabel: How do you feel?

Andrea and I just met her. We are all very excited. So is she.

Conchi: Very excited.

Isabel: Why?

It’s time to talk about Loli.

Conchi: Well, because we are going to talk about my mother’s life. And it is a very special and beautiful day.

Welcome to Lunáticas, the series by (De eso no se habla) and Producciones del KO.

Conchi: Oh man, I wish my mother was here so we could talk about her story.

This is the final episode: We do talk about Loli.

Erica: What did you want to do?

Andrea: The Ouija board.

Conchi: That’s what I had in mind! I mean, let’s put a Ouija board here and ask Lola (laughs).

Isabel: Well, let’s do it.

[Theme music: Lunáticas]

It is Thursday afternoon. We are in the offices of Libros del KO, in a small room full of books. We are here because the books muffle the sound and also because in the middle of the room there is a big table. We have set up four microphones and there we are, sitting around that table. Erica, Andrea, Conchi and myself.

Isabel: I am going to tell you a few things about how it works, okay? So that we all know…

We test the microphones…

Andrea: Let’s see, shall we?

We synchronize them, or try to synchronize them, with the clapping.

All: One, two and three.

[Clapping]

And we start.

Isabel: Are you all right?

Erica: Yes.

Andrea: Perfect.

Isabel: Okay.

From the beginning of this podcast there has been a term on which we have hesitated a lot. It is the word we have to use to define the absence, the disappearance, the lack of Loli. And now that we had Conchi in front of us it was time to ask her, to make the words clear.

Isabel: When we were writing the script we were thinking a lot about the word “abandonment”. And I wanted to share it with you, right? I don’t know if you, well, if you feel that your mother abandoned you, really. That is the question. Or…

Conchi: Yes, yes, I do feel it. I do feel that she abandoned me. Very much so. I have missed her very much on many occasions, for many reasons… It would have helped me a lot to have her by my side, because I have had a very bad time, unfortunately. And yes, I do feel that she has abandoned me.

And now that we have the word clear, Conchi tells us that this abandonment has always been there. Conchi, we know, grew up with her maternal grandparents and does not remember her childhood as a happy period.

Conchi: I was really good when I was with my cousins and family, but then I felt very lonely. I felt very lonely. For me, my childhood was in a living room. In a living room.

In that living room, sometimes the phone rang. It was her mother.

Conchi: My grandparents were the ones who took the call and handed me the phone. But I didn’t even know where I was and they didn’t give me explanations or anything.

Isabel: And do you remember what you talked about?

Conchi: No. Well, I can remember that it was a strange, strange feeling. You were talking to a person you couldn’t put a face to or anything, I mean, it was… I don’t know, it was like… I don’t know, very strange.

Andrea: Wasn’t there a picture of her at home?

Conchi: Mm… No. Nor did they show it to me if they had it.

Erica: Well, they existed, they existed, because then the aunt showed them to us.

Conchi: But they didn’t have them on, no. They didn’t show them to me.

Isabel: Did you ask at home?

Conchi: No, I didn’t, I was too young to ask.

Conchi doesn’t remember how old she was when she saw her mother for the first time since she left, but she does remember what it was like.

Conchi: I remember that I was in the entrance to the kitchen, she arrived and then she kissed me and I said “Hello, Loli”. I remember that I was very quiet, like… Not nervous, but… Like shy. You’re going to meet a person they tell you is your mother but who you don’t know.

Andrea: Did she bring you any gift?

Conchi: Well, she brought a dog, which I was very excited about. But then they took it back because my grandmother and grandfather didn’t want it. I mean, that dog would have given me life. It would have helped me a lot, because that loneliness I had in that living room, well… I think she took the dog because she felt something.

But Conchi not only grew up without her mother. Her father wasn’t there either. That was another of the topics we had to talk about in this conversation, but when I mention Mateo’s name, Conchi remains silent.

Isabel: Don’t you want to talk about Mateo?

Conchi: No. Not at all, no.

Isabel: Do you want to tell us why you don’t want to talk about him?

Conchi: Because I don’t feel like talking about him at all. I don’t feel like talking about him.

She doesn’t feel like talking about him, but Conchi doesn’t mind telling us the story of how she got to him.

Conchi: Let’s see. I’m going to tell it. As I also have a branch a bit similar to Erica’s, which is research, because I love it… So one day I was ironing and I said “oh, I want to meet my father, where the hell is he, what happened here?”, whatever. And I said “well come on, let’s go look”.

At that time there was no internet on the phones and not even in the houses.

Conchi: So I used the guidebook, this green guidebook. I searched by last name.

She found an address in Vallecas and went there.

Conchi: And I knocked on the door. Ding, dong. “Please, is Mateo there?” “Well, no.”

Conchi left him a message. A few days later, Mateo called her.

Conchi: And when he called me, well, we met and so on… And after meeting and getting to know his family and so on, I was very uncomfortable, I don’t know… Well, since he wasn’t sure, he asked me to take a paternity test, and I agreed to take a paternity test, but no… Not for him, but… Because I was sure that I was his daughter, I mean, it was very clear to me that I was his daughter. What do you want…? I mean, what do you want me to prove? I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it either, because it was something I had pending, but… But well, he passed it on to his family… He proved that I was his daughter, but that’s it. That’s why I don’t want to talk about him.

And since this was about looking for answers, or at least looking for approximations to some answers, I asked Erica and Conchi if they believed that Mateo had some responsibility in Loli’s later life.

Conchi: I think all of it. Well, not all of it. Let’s see, let’s see. If my father didn’t recognize me at the time and then… I mean, my mother denounced him because she knew he was my father… It was because he really didn’t want to take charge of the situation, so I think he did have responsibility.

Erica: What I do believe is that it created that big question that we don’t know how to answer, right? Why my grandmother left. I do think it had a lot to do with that. With how the pregnancy was managed and I think it had a lot to do with it. Now, I wish we had a little camera…

Unfortunately we don’t have that little camera, nor do we know how to make a Ouija board, as Conchi wanted, so that Loli would answer us. But Conchi believes that there is something else that could have influenced her mother’s disappearance and the life she lived afterwards.

Conchi: I think that in order for her to become a prostitute it was because the place where she was living was not good. So I think that part of it was because my grandparents imposed certain rules on her that my grandmother also imposed on me and I had to have a lot of strength… And I think that was part of the reason why my mother left.

I asked her to tell us more about those rules.

Conchi: Well, they didn’t let me interact with the children on the street. They had me super-protected. Then when I was a little bit more adult… Well, at that time parents set a schedule to get home, didn’t they? Well, they always set a much lower one for me. So what did that do? Well, I became gruff. Not gruff. Oh, I can’t think of the word. I became…

Erica: Rebel.

Conchi: Rebel.

Isabel: Do you understand her, your mother?

Conchi: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I mean, I left and it wasn’t the same time… I ran away from home, I got married early… Because what I wanted was to get out of my house.

Erica: I have also sometimes thought that maybe it’s as if you had also paid the consequences of what grandma did. Maybe… I don’t know what rules they would have set for her, but maybe the fact that she had run away, or had left and they didn’t know where she was… They said “Hey, so that this doesn’t happen to us with Conchi, let’s tie her up short” and they achieved precisely the opposite.

But it turned out that Conchi was not the only one who had repeated a pattern in the family.

Erica: Because in the end, Yaya Conce also got pregnant without getting married.

Conchi: Exactly.

Erica: And it was a long time before, she was also…

Conchi: That’s true.

Erica: So…

Yaya Conce, Erica’s great-grandmother, Conchi’s grandmother, Loli’s mother. Yaya Conce married her daughter’s father, yayo Manolo, but that stigma, that of having become pregnant before getting married, in the 40’s, was not erased.

Erica: Sometimes I think that maybe that way of being strict was a little bit to protect us from the rest, right? From society, from what others might think and so on, not so much because within the family…

To protect from a society in which being a single mother was so penalized, both for those who left and for those who stayed.

Erica: The neighbor in the neighborhood, the one who stayed with her daughter, who also had a child when she was single…

Erica is telling her mother about Manoli, the woman she and Andrea went to visit at the end of the previous episode.

Erica: She said she stayed but her life was super hard. Both because of the neighborhood and… and because of her family. I mean, she felt like… I don’t remember how she expressed it, but in the end it was, she went to work, came home, went back to work… She always felt like she was being accused of having made that mistake…

Conchi: Yes, well, it wasn’t life.

Manoli’s life, Loli’s life, were defined, in part, by that stigma. Just like the life of Mª Isabel, the protagonist of Andrea’s book.

Isabel: That’s what I was going to say, that we cannot know what happened to Loli but we do have the history of what happened to women like Loli, don’t we?

Conchi: Sure, sure.

Andrea: Yes, the circumstances are very similar, aren’t they? To what Maria Isabel went through. She also became pregnant without being married, the father of her child did not take care of her either, right? Well, we all know that women who in certain years had their daughters alone, well, they were socially punished a lot, weren’t they?

Conchi: Poor girls.

Isabel: What happened to them?

Andrea: Well, they could end up like Loli and Mª Isabel did, working as prostitutes for example, or they could end up in their own homes, right? As happened to Loli’s friend, who was not much better, right? And that in one way or another… I mean, they go from institution of confinement to institution of confinement, right? That is to say, from the family to the world of prostitution, often to prisons…

Other times these institutions of confinement were special reformatories for girls and adolescents: they were the reformatories of the Patronato de Protección a la Mujer, that institution created by the Franco regime for what they considered “fallen or at risk of falling” women, and which lasted until 1985. An institution plagued with single mothers.

Andrea: We have also given it a lot of thought during this year of research, right? Why Loli did not fall into the hands of the Patronato, because in fact she had all the cards, didn’t she? It is true that she should have been under the guardianship of the State. Both for having become pregnant and for having had a boyfriend… Of course, if you worked as a prostitute or if you had a somewhat lax morality, those were more than enough reasons to fall into this institution, right? Which at the end of the day was nothing more than the social services of the Franco regime, specifically focused on the re-education of girls and women, right? Which in most cases were forced labor, punishments and, well, a very bad life, right? But you know, she could have ended up there perfectly well.

In the last year, Erica has also been reading a lot about the Patronato. For her, it has been a way to understand the shadow of what women like her grandmother had to face.

Erica: Besides knowing all the history of the Patronato and how it worked at that time, and precisely by explaining the Patronato, understanding how people worked at that time, how bad it was to be a single mother… I could imagine it, but not so much. And I think I told you at some point, “I can’t stop reading about this”. And how we didn’t know about it, and how I, being a social worker, had no idea about it. Besides, it’s like… You could easily make a mistake, I mean, reading about this I said “any of us would end up in there right now”. I mean, it was very easy to break those rules, because they were so, so rigid that as soon as you moved a foot you were already…

Andrea: And also, as always, class goes through everything, right? Because the daughters of good families were solved in another way. Either they went to London for an abortion, or the boy was forced to marry them, or they pretended it was somebody else’s child… Or I don’t know, other strategies were established, right? And the shame was not as great, was it?

Conchi: Of course. It was almost better that she left. Of course, because if she was going to be punished like that, well….

Andrea: And do you know what values she had? I mean, can you imagine her considering having an abortion?

Conchi: I’ve thought about that sometimes, around my birthday, even on my birthday I have cried a lot thinking about… That day. And I think that for her it wasn’t… I think it wasn’t beautiful. So I think about that a lot. It must have been very hard to find out she was pregnant. And if she didn’t abort it was because she didn’t have the means. She couldn’t, but if she could have, I think she would have done it. Although it’s hard to say, I think she would have done it.

[Music]

Parents who are too strict. A boyfriend who doesn’t want to take charge. The family stigma, repeated, of a pregnancy while unmarried. The threat of Franco’s institutions against women who do not comply with the norms of national Catholicism. And in the face of all that, Loli and her own decisions. Loli and her agency to decide what she wanted to do. What, of all that, weighed the most?

Conchi: I can say that I would have liked to grow up with my mother and then to have her be with my daughter. But well, if she decided that, I can’t judge her. On the contrary. I think she has been through too much, a very hard life, because at that time everything that my daughter and Andrea have seen and have… Well, damn, it’s very tough. I mean, I didn’t like that she had such a hard time. That’s what I didn’t like. And I think she took that life and I think she stayed where she was because maybe she found love where she didn’t find it here. I think that’s why she stayed there. Regardless of whether she had a bad time. You know? Many times we stay where it doesn’t suit us because we find love, so….

Erica: See, throughout this year I have often been very angry when I have said “Why didn’t I ask before?” Because most of these questions that I still have and that I think I will still have could have been solved. Or not, she could have sent me to hell… But it is also another thing that I think has served me well this year of being out there investigating, it’s like I really don’t know anything deep down. I mean, I have many clues, many opinions, many points of view, but there is a part that is like, there are very few things that I dare to say “this is how it was”. Did she work as a prostitute before, in Madrid? Who knows.

Andrea: Of course. On top of that, the same thing has happened to you that happened to me in the investigation of Mª Isabel, that you have a lot of documentation but it is still Francoist documentation, right? Documentation of the Francoist police, of the Francoist judges, of the family… Right? With very rigid norms and values, right? Although it seems that when you find the documentation you have already found the truth, not at all.

Loli returned definitively to Madrid in 1995. Conchi says that they never had a mother-daughter relationship. But she also tells us that, since 1989, she began to be more present. Since the year Erica was born.

Erica: The other day you told me that you remembered that they had accompanied you to the movies.

Conchi: Yes, my grandmother and my mother accompanied me. And well, my mother was very happy. Yes, yes, it was a very nice moment.

Isabel: And when you had Erica, was your mother there?

Conchi: Yes, my mother was there, and my grandmother. They were both there.

Erica: It was also my grandmother’s birthday.

Conchi: Of course, then…

Erica: And nobody remembered. Nobody remembered… Right, mom?

Conchi: Nobody. Nobody congratulated her. Then of course, in the afternoon… Well, everybody said “oh, the girl, oh, what a beautiful girl, so and so”…. And of course, my mother said “Well, what’s going on? You don’t congratulate me or what?” “Oh, Loli, it’s true that it’s your birthday!” And we all said “Oh, congratulations!”, I don’t know how much… And none of us remembered, of course. It was very funny because there were quite a lot of people in the room and it was… It was very nice.

Isabel: What day is that?

Erica: March 8.

Conchi: Women’s Day. What a coincidence, huh?

At the end of the conversation I asked Erica and Conchi if this investigation had changed, in any way, their relationship with Loli.

Conchi: The image I have of my mother, that is, knowing the whole story really… It’s like there are lights, but I also have many shadows. It is the reality. Because at times when I needed her and at times when she was here I didn’t have her.

Erica: Yes. In fact, there was one thing that hadn’t happened to me for a long time and that was, for example, remembering her so much on my birthday. Or dreaming about her. I hadn’t dreamt about my grandmother. And it has been this year that I have dreamt about her several times, I mean, in a good mood. There hasn’t been a moment when she told me “Stop rummaging around.” So I think that is very powerful. And I have noticed it in us and in our conversations, how somehow there has been a part of it that has helped us to reconcile in a certain way…

Conchi: Yes, reconciliation with her, yes, yes, yes, totally, huh? I, well, I have really felt very much… Now with all this I have felt much more in her place and I have said “Damn, she has had it very bad, it’s a very hard time”. But also… There is also the other side. So… That’s how it is, that’s the reality. But it is true that I have reconciled a lot with her, I have even apologized to her maybe for not… Saying “Oh, mother, I didn’t put myself in your place, I’m really sorry”, I really do that kind of things.

Erica: I think you say it at some point in Lunática that you don’t intend to write the story of a heroine. Or something like that, or… That concept, right? It’s like… To be doing this is not a matter of “now we’re going to beatify anybody.” No. It’s “well, there’s all this, there’s all this material.” And it also helps to build a history that is also, I think, the history of all of us.

And there we were, two generations of women talking about a third one. As Erica says, talking about the history of all of us. And all because one day Erica started to read a book and one day Andrea started to write it.

Isabel: What a way to continue a book, isn’t it? Because Lunática has awakened another…

Erica: Another Maria Isabel, another lunatic.

Isabel: Another lunatic.

Erica: Yes.

Isabel: Here we are talking all the time about the Ouija board, but I think that the Ouija board is this, that is…

Erica: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Isabel: It is… I mean, through Andrea going crazy investigating a story about a woman she does not know…

Conchi: My God, it’s beautiful.

Isabel: And that this leads you to relive a person…

Conchi: This is beautiful.

Isabel: And that this suddenly leads you to revive someone else, wow.

Conchi: It’s incredible, it’s super nice, it’s a story…

Andrea: I’m left with the sadness of not doing the Ouija board, I’ll tell you that too.

[Laughs]

Conchi: Me too!

Andrea: It works as a metaphor for me.

[Laughter]

Conchi: I’m also left with… Because imagine the connection between the two. It would have been very interesting.

Isabel: Do you think they knew each other?

Conchi: Yes.

Erica: I think so.

Conchi: I think so too. Yes, yes.

Erica: And if there is an afterlife, I think they must have had a great time.

Conchi: Yes, they will be there… They will be, “look at them, these ones”.

Erica: Yes.

[Laughs]

[Music]

And even though it seemed like this story was over, there was still a little mission left.

Erica: Hi, Olga!

We went back to Bilbao, to Olga’s bar.

Erica: No, well, because now… It seems that we’ve finished the investigation here. And we wanted to finish it where we started it, which was…

Olga: Where we discovered…

Erica: Yes.

Olga: But well, you gave the lead, not me.

Erica: Yes, but well, we came… I remember coming here in August, the three of us…

The executive production of this series was done by Leire Ariz and myself, Isabel Cadenas Cañón. And I was also the director.

Érica: I was just thinking that I remember when I read Lunática and I read the part where Andrea talked about you, and I thought “I want to meet that woman.”

The production was made by Érica Santillán, Andrea Momoitio, Daniel Boluda and myself. Dani Boluda also wrote the script and the editing was done by Leire Ariz and me.

Erica: And now I think about it and I say “wow, how cool”, and that I am super grateful for everything you have helped us with. I think that if I didn’t…

Olga: Well, how exaggerated you girls are.

Erica: No, no, I think…

Olga: It’s just that…

Andrea: We have to set up a detective agency.

Olga: I think that this… Let’s see. I don’t think I helped in any way more than… For me this is normal.

The editing and sound design were done by Paula Morais and myself. Iago Mendívil has done the mixing and sound design of episodes 1 to 4. Marcos Salso, episode 5. The voiceovers, as always, have been done by Isolé División Sonora. The music is by Menina Arroutada with additional music by Sara Muñiz.

Andrea: I want to start a detective agency with Olga.

Olga: Ok.

Erica: Thank you very much, Olga. Goodbye.

The communication was done by Tais Álvarez with the support of Andrea Momoitio. The press, Pablo Malgin. The collage is by Carmen Cáceres and the graphic design by Paula Morais. Delia Blesa was in charge of travel production and post-production. Lucía Pérez Oroz helped with the research. Thanks to all the people who with your listening and comments have helped us to make this series better.

Isabel: Did the batteries fall out of the recorder on the way out?

Erica: Yes.

Isabel: That’s a great metaphor, girl.

Erica: It’s just that I have batteries everywhere because Dani always makes me change the batteries when I start recording, because they wear out very quickly. And I dropped them right at the exit. That’s it, don’t buy any more batteries, Erica.

Andrea: Are you satisfied?

Erica: I think so, I mean, I also have the feeling that these questions will never be solved.

Andrea: Say goodbye to Maria Isabel.

Erica: Goodbye, Maria Isabel.

[Laughter]

Isabel: Thank you for everything. Gorgeous.

Érica: Yes, I think it was very cool…

Lunáticas is a production of Se habla Producciones and Producciones del KO, and it is an explosion of the book Lunática, as its author, Andrea Momoitio, likes to say. And with this episode, around that table, talking about what is not talked about, our second season ends. Thank you for being there, thank you for listening to us and thank you for helping us to defy silences. Thank you, thank you, thank you to our generous and faithful community. Let’s keep on defying silences. We’ll stay tuned.