If we follow the rules of detective novels, to solve a case you have to know the setting, be wary of hasty conclusions and collect the evidence that is at your disposal. In the one that concerns us, the entrails of a witchcraft process in the Spain of Carlos V and Felipe II, the difficulty makes it necessary to comply with these recommendations in a meticulous manner. Lets start by the beginning. Located in the province of Guadalajara, the town of Pareja belonged to the lordship of the bishops of Cuenca, who made it their place of rest and seat of diocesan synods. Now it is a small town that still preserves part of its murals, some emblazoned mansions, a hermitage with its Virgen de los Remedios and a beautiful church, whose altarpiece and treasures were lost during the Civil War. It is a place with a strong presence of God, but where five hundred years ago demonic events took place. Throughout the XNUMXth century, the death of several children, who appeared to have bruised bodies and blood on their mouths and noses, caused the population to panic. Parents put their babies to bed and later they were found dead, in an inexplicable way. Like a worm in a ripe fruit, fear and suspicion worked its way into the hearts of the neighbors. Two women, Juana 'La Morillas' and Francisca 'La Ansarona', were accused of witchcraft and of committing the murders to manufacture a substance that allowed them to carry out their rituals. View of part of the walled enclosure of Pareja Ayto. de Pareja “The processes of Pareja included the creed towards the devil, covens and a great subsequent repercussion in popular culture”, tells the historian and archaeologist Javier Fernández Ortea, author of 'Alcarria witch. History of witchcraft in Guadalajara and the processes of the town of Pareja' (Aache, 2022), and responsible for an excellent job of research and documentation of the events. "It was assumed that the defendants in Couple celebrated their conventicles in the Barahona field, in Soria, and that place has survived in literature and in proverbs as a place of witches," explained the researcher. "I have resorted to the Topographical Relations of Felipe II, because there the demographic stress of Pareja is evident, that he had few resources to live," he adds, recalling that the most lands were in the hands of the council, which increased the scarcity of the population. . This is a key fact, a point of light in a dark story, as it allows various rational explanations to be considered about what really happened. Judge heresy But first you have to delve into the history, know the details and concepts. As the late historian Joseph Pérez explains in his 'History of witchcraft in Spain' (Espasa, 2010), magician, sorcerer and witch are not the same thing. The last term refers to an explicit pact with the devil, who is visited in covens that are accessed after applying an ointment on the body. Unlike what happened in other European territories where authentic massacres took place, in the Crown of Castile it was the Inquisition, that is, an ecclesiastical court, responsible for judging witches. Without attempting the excesses typical of the Justice of the time, the truth is that this factor made the condensations softer than in regions now integrated into France or Germany, since the Inquisition focused on judging heresy, that is, the deviation of the Christian faith, and not the curse, or the damage caused to the members of the community. The parsimony of the inquisitors and the time that the processes lasted also benefited the accused. These nuances allow us to understand what happened in the process of Pareja, which began tragically with a complaint to the court of the Inquisition of Cuenca. After being accused, La Morillas was locked up in the battered fortress of the town, of which now only a square tower remains standing, integrated into the bullring. In a sober moment of controversy and in which Fernández Ortea did not offer a definitive decision, the unfortunate prisoner was murdered or committed suicide, but in any case her body fell from the top of her cell and the population burned it on a farm belonging to the surroundings. La Ansarona, a 50-year-old widow with a reputation as a pimp and for having squandered her husband's inheritance on consuming wine, did end up in court. One of the great reports of the historian is the transcription of the documents that collect the statements that the accused gave before the questions of the inquisitors or during the torture sessions. His fragments of extraordinary hardness, but key to understanding the shortcomings faced by a person in a trance of this type. "It was intended to facilitate the original text messages so that the reader would have difficulty interpreting or correcting them on the line," said the researcher. “It is very graphic to transcribe literally, because you can clearly see how what they said at each moment was written down with pen and paper.” The witches of Pareja met between Calle Fuente de Oro and Calle Mediavilla Guillermo Navarro As I mentioned, reading La Ansarona's laments during this process was overwhelming. His trial began to be held in Cuenca at the end of November 1527. “Oh, gentlemen, my arm is open! […] Pity me, I am a Christian! My lords of my soul!”, he exclaimed during a torture session, with his body tied to a rack where his limbs were stretched and in which they reached from one arm to the height of the elbow. “Take it away from me, I will say more, much more than you think! […] Loosen it up, I'll tell!”, he promised, unable to bear the torment any longer and trying to put an end to it with new inventions and denunciations, also involving more women from the town, some daughters of La Morillas, in the process. After accusing herself of witchcraft and confessing that she had converted thirty years before due to the coercion of her dead friend, La Ansarona described her routines. She assured that La Morillas and she flew through a high window, cut the demon and had sexual relations with him. "The devil in the form of a black man with shining eyes kissed this confessante and frolicked and slept with her carnally," he claimed. “This confessor saw how one was in the field like a bastard seated in a demonic manner and that, like the main one, the sorcerers and witches and demons, came to him, and made him obeisance and reverence, and this confessor like the others, and the said bastard was made of embers”, he described, about one of the conventicles in which he had apparently resulted in the Barahona field. He also said that the witches killed the children of Pareja to obtain from them the ingredient with which they made the 'unto' (ointment) that they applied to their bodies to levitate to the scene of the covens, a substance that Fernández Ortea ventures could be ergot or henbane, both with the ability to cause hallucinations. Possible drug use “We cannot know much about this ointment, although the defendants tell how they administer it to their groin or elbows during collective rituals”, points out Fernández Ortea. "It is known of the consumption of alkaloid substances as an evasion and even that the famous flights of witches could be levitations that they experience when taking these substances," he specifies. In this sentence, the Hispanist Pérez provided very interesting data, recalling that ergot, one of the substances that could be behind the events of Pareja and that is known to have been involved in the famous Salem witchcraft trials, contains an acid that It is used in the production of LSD, a hallucinogenic drug. Ergot is a type of fungus that grows on rye, the cereal with which black bread was made, the cheapest and therefore most consumed by the lower classes. It is also the cause of the fire of San Antonio, a disease that caused necrosis, which, like Fernández Ortea's adventure, could explain the bruises that covered the bodies of the dead baby. Museo de Pareja, in which a torture rack and the reproduction of two sanbenitos Fernández Ortea are displayed The other scenario suggested by the researcher is no less dramatic. It refers to the possibility of infanticide, a widespread practice during the Old Regime that had nothing to do with the cruelty of parents, but rather with demographic stress caused by the lack of resources or with social shame at birth. of illegitimate children As Fernández Ortea points out in his book, “one of the most used ways to get rid of unwanted creatures was to crush them at night by lying on them”. Reading the statements of the parents of the babies can fit in with this suspicion, since they always agree on the same point: the children had gone to bed when death occurred. The truth is that his descriptions of the discovery of the bodies are devastating. To cite an example, Marineta, who appeared in Pedro de Lavieta's video, offered a version of the books as far as possible, as collected by the documentation. The child found cold and suffocated by witches, full of bruises on his neck, body and legs, that by reason her husband was not in the town, that he was on his way, and that he suspected that [Juana La ] Morillas, who had a reputation as a witch who had gotten angry with her husband, would have fifteen days, because she had not wanted to give him a melon, "he said. This enmity between those responsible for the murder and the victims is repeated in other testimonies, in which some offense is cited or the refusal to grant the alleged witches any favor, object or food. An inherited evil “Witchcraft would feel like something contagious, so the whole environment was susceptible to being accused,” says Fernández Ortea. Although the first witchcraft process concluded without deaths thanks to the intervention of the Council of the Supreme Inquisition, which was more skeptical and for example speculated that La Ansarona should not have been sentenced to 'relaxation' (execution) despite the opinion of the judges. of Cuenca, that did not mean the end of the mysterious events. Almost thirty years later, in 1558, two daughters of La Morillas were tried again for witchcraft after an avalanche of opposition from the town's residents, who complained of new deaths of children and the coercion and threats of both women against community. “The second wave occurred because those involved used their fame as witches to survive. They ordered food and drink, and there was probably a component of alcoholism in those cases as well. They threatened women in labor. The people got fed up and denounced”, summarizes the researcher. "In this case, there were exiles, public flogging and also social condemnation," Ye concluded. To learn more about this history, the Couple City Council offers the possibility of taking guided tours of the recently opened museum in the mural tower, with explanatory panels and objects linked to the processes.
