‘The daughter (black) of Cayetana’ of Alba – The miami Herald

The writer Carmen Posadas discovered a episode, little-known EIGHTEENTH-century English, the adoption by the powerful Cayetana de Alba of a black girl, and turned the story into a novel in which he describes slavery in Spain, however, believes that it is one of the countries that are least xenophobic.

The daughter of Cayetana, edited by Espasa, is the title of this historical novel in which the writer uruguayan-Spanish-recovers the life of the court of Charles IV, where he developed the childhood of this girl, and the duchess left the legacy of a significant amount of money and a life annuity.

In an interview, Inns explains how through the lives of Cayetana de Alba, the girl Mary of the Light and of the true mother of the small, a slave arrival of Cuba, which is a character of fiction, he has recreated a sort of Up and down series (English) of the Spanish court.

Cayetana was the thirteenth duchess of Alba and grandee of Spain, a woman master of its own destiny because he had money and power, and though it was frivolous and extravagant had "a great heart", explains Posadas.

Having raised blacks was then a sign of distinction of the era, and the duchess, who could not have children, received a gift of a baby mulatto, who was adopted and treated like a daughter.

These characters that existed in reality are mixed in the novel of the writer with other fiction such as the girl’s mother, Trinity, which was used by Carmen Posadas to speak of slavery in the Peninsula.

And although the slaves were very common in the Spanish colonies, and despite the fact that between 1450 and 1750 approximately 800,000 came to the Peninsula in the EIGHTEENTH century had become an article of luxury.

But the author points out that, unlike the anglo-saxon countries where they were punished with jail interracial marriages, in the Spanish colonies was allowed: "Spain is the country less xenophobic that I know of and that we began to notice from soon."

Next to the duchess appear in the novel numerous characters of the era, such as Francisco de Goya, and of the Court, from the queen María Luisa of Parma, who had a very bad relationship with Cayetana of Alba, the prime minister Manuel Godoy or the sailor Alejandro Malaspina.

"The court was a nest of intrigues and intrigues," explains the writer, who says, "what is happening now in the Spanish policy is a kindergarten at the side of what was happening at the time."

But Carmen Posadas also find similarities with the present because, remember, the nobles of the whole of life is felt threatened by people who, like Godoy, came to power by embodying a new society.

In that scenario, upper-class women could become more free and educated than they were then during the NINETEENTH century and the mid TWENTIETH centuries, indicates the author.

In terms of the feelings that Posadas described in the novel, argues that "the only thing that changes is the setting: the passions are the same now and the way people react, too."

The documentation work took Carmen Posadas to see the will of Cayetana, which has the House of Alba, where he his decision to leave at his death, which occurred at the age of 40, an inheritance to the child that he adopted and which was called Mary of the Light.

The author also recovers anecdotes of the time, like the invention of the denture: was a dentist spaniard Antonio Saelices el, who made the first denture that was able to stick to the gums and allowed to eat with her, a novelty, premiered at the court then.