“If I had been born at that time, instead of two children I would have had 14 and I would have had to survive, like my grandmother did. But I’m sure she would return a lot of cakes.” Blanca Romero (Gijón, 1976) wraps herself in black habits in The Abbess, by Antonio Chavarrías, to embody the nun who would best fit her personality in the medieval abbey of San Juan (Huesca). Sister Heloísa is cultured, a lover of art, with worldly experience and that will make her the enemy of a young new abbess (Daniela Brown) in whose heart the love of neighbor clashes with her carnal love.
Shot in the Loarre castle in Huesca, the film tells the story of Emma, ??daughter of Count Guifré el Pilós, who from her position as abbess became an active resister to the patriarchal world of the 10th century. “Heloísa, my character, stays pregnant, they take the child from her and imprison her there to save the family’s honor. This happened with many women for different reasons: in the congregation there is one lame, another lesbian, a widow without children to take care of her… At least they ate hot.”
Chavarrías filmed in the most natural way possible, with no other lighting than that offered by the winter sun outside and inside the walls, through the small windows with the help of candles and candles. They were cold rolling. A lot. And for Blanca, the word cold sounds warm: “I come from the world of fashion and parading – in winter you present the summer season – I suffered so much that I told myself that I never wanted to be cold again in my life. When Antonio explained to me how we were going to shoot, I thought ‘this guy is crazy, he’s going to screw us with the cold, I’m not going.’ But he convinced me and if 80-year-old ladies, the oldest in the congregation, were there from early in the morning without complaining, how could I protest? My face would fall with shame. I kept quiet but from time to time I looked at Antonio and said to him ‘bastard’ under my breath (laughs).”
Out of obligation, faith or because they had no choice, quite a few women professed vows to escape a life as a slave, first to their father and then to their husband. Or her children. If Blanca Romero had been born in those years, she believes she would have confronted the men: “The women in my family come from the mining basin and just as my father was always very sweet, I saw my grandmother defend herself by returning them to my grandfather. And to my aunt, the same with her husband. We are women who defend ourselves and we have a lot of strength. If today a husband who came from the bar drunk to make me a son and then left would never lay his hand on me, I think that in the Middle Ages he would return all the cakes.”
Blanca is the mother of two children, Martín (11) and the model Lucía Rivera (25). Raising both without a father figure has allowed him to see a pattern that other people do not detect: “Education is essential: due to genetics, there are men who are born alpha males and we must educate them, correct them, lower their testosterone a little and that protective desire.” , a pulse that they feel from birth until they are older. My son never saw a man at home, only his sister and me, and the poor guy felt that weight of protecting us, because he was ‘the man of the house’. And I say that he is genetic because if he didn’t see it, he was born that way. I had to be very firm, tough and constant. Also his sister. I raised my children alone, I set up my home alone, I have only ruled my house. I never got paid anything, nor did I have a purse from a man; I have always been independent. And I have educated my son to be aware that, in addition to being his mother, I am the head of the house and I have been living for 30 years without needing anyone to protect me.”
