Image: Cau Ferrat Museum, Sitges
A commemorative post marks the birth anniversary of Emilia Pardo Bazán, born in La Coruña in 1851 and deceased in Madrid in 1921, recalling that she was at Cau Ferrat as a guest of Santiago Rusiñol. Pardo Bazán was regarded by many as the finest Spanish novelist of the 19th century; she also wrote short stories, travel narratives and newspaper articles, and was one of the strongest advocates of feminism in her native Galicia and in Spain more broadly.
She arrived at the Sitges railway station by train with her son Jaume, Rusiñol, Miquel Utrillo, Àngel Guimerà, Josep Maria Jordà and the Galician writer’s private secretary. The visit reached its central moment when the group encountered two paintings by El Greco: ‘The Tears of Saint Peter’ and ‘The Penitent Magdalene.’
On the way to the railway station, as they passed the Casino Prado, Rusiñol told Pardo Bazán that the theater had recently presented the first performance in all Spain of Maurice Maeterlinck’s ‘La intrusa.’ The museum blog account of the episode was published on 21 July 2020.
Pardo Bazán later published two articles in gratitude for Rusiñol’s hospitality: ‘Sobre la blanca Sitges. Una carta a Doménico Theotocópuli llamado el Greco’ in La Vanguardia on 24 July, and ‘La memorable noche’ in the Madrid magazine La Época on 26 September 1895. The day after returning to Barcelona, she wrote Rusiñol a letter of thanks that ended with a reminder: ‘recuerde que me debe usted un cuadro’.
The visit began the friendship between Emilia Pardo Bazán and Santiago Rusiñol.
