María Vinyals, the woman of the future [English Edition]

Seven lives under the shadow of a castle

Diego Piay Augusto

This work is the result of a rigorous and thorough research, with a great amount of unpublished material (documental, graphic and oral testimonies), about the fascinating history of María Vinyals y Ferrés, born in 1875 in the Soutomaior Castle (Pontevedra).

She grew up in a wealthy family, lived intense experiences and ended up becoming a prolific writer, a pioneer in feminism and a woman worried about the future of the society that surrounded her.In her private life, she would rebel against the chains of an ill-fated marriage.

With her second husband –the Cuban doctor Enrique Lluria–, she would share politic and social ideals. Together they would end up founding a great sanatorium in 1910 using the old theatre of the Soutomaior Castle. They moved there with their five children, four of whom were from their previous marriages.

In 1917, drowning in debts and marginalized because of their political views, María Vinyals and Enrique Lluria would leave the Soutomaior Castle forever. It was then when their paths and those of their children Antonio, Enrique, Emilia, María Teresa and Roger, would take different courses and would never meet again.

This historical essay (published in tree languages: Spanish, Galician and English), looks back on those seven lives that grew up under the shadow of a castle. From this impressive medieval fortress, nowadays a public property owned by the Deputación de Pontevedra, Diego Piay travels beyond its walls and its battlements, beyond Pontevedra, Galicia… or Europe.

This history took shape inside the robust walls of this castle and now, so many years after, goes back to where it all began.

* Spanish edition, here

* Galician edition, here

PDF [Ficha + nota de prensa]

English review

O autor/a

Diego Piay Augusto (Pontevedra, 1979) has a degree in History with the specialties of Archaeology and Ancient History. He teaches Ancient History in the University of Oviedo and, simultaneously, has been working as an archaeologist for over twenty years, directing archaeological interventions and taking part in emblematic excavations like Pompeii or Piazza Armerina. He is the author of the book Prisciliano. Vida y muerte de un disidente en el amanecer del Imperio Cristiano (2018). After a 15-year-long research on this topic, he got his doctorate in 2016 in the University of Santiago de Compostela with an outstanding cum laude mark and also received a special doctorate award. Numerous papers published in national and international journals, where archaeological sources have always enjoyed a main role, certify his work as a researcher. In this work, María Vinyals, the woman of the future,
Diego Piay sets aside his usual historical and scientific inquisitiveness to show the readers the results of a thorough investigation born under the wing of the Project of Musealization of the Soutomaior Castle,
promoted by the Deputación de Pontevedra. During this program the history of the fortress was researched, especially everything related to María Vinyals y Ferrés, one of its most renowned owners.