Lesbians Hoodwink the Spanish Catholic Church: Elisa and Marcella
8:52PM Mar 1, 2022
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1880s
Did you know that in 1901, a pair of women tricked the Catholic church into marrying them becoming the first same sex couple married in Spain? Get ready for the full scoop of love today on lovestruck daily. Hi, I'm Alisha Rai. And I'm Sarah Wendell. Welcome to lovestruck daily where we deliver a true love story to your earbuds each and every weekday. I'm in love with
that I'm in love with you.
Today. We have an incredible historical romance where two people trick the Catholic Church and I am so excited to tell you about this story. I am all for tricking people for love. Now. Have you ever been to Spain? I have not. No, I've never been to Spain. It's on my bucket list. Okay, everything is delicious. Just you should hang up with me right now and just go Yeah, I believe that everything looks delicious that I want to go to Spain and I want to go to Italy. Those are like my two top places that I have not gone. I was planning on going 2020 And then stuff happened. Yeah. I also had travel plans in 2020. It was my 20th anniversary. We were gonna go to France, and we were gonna go to Wales. We did not do either of those things. I love Wales. Oh, I've never been Welsh descent. I really want to go Oh, yeah, my maiden name is a Welsh name. No one can pronounce it. But I studied abroad in Spain twice once when I was in high school. And once when I was in college, and I love this story, because I just I have absolute respect for anyone that can pull the wool over the eyes of the whole church. Like that's amazing. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. I also just love Spain. I love the food. I love the culture. I love the way that when you walk down the street, there are very specific smells like tapas and olive oil and olives and tuna and all of these specific things. The minute I smell them, I start remembering more Spanish language which I don't always remember all the time. Since you can't go to Spain right this moment because we are recording a podcast otherwise I will be like just hang up and go. I would like to tell you a story about two women from Spain who risked a lot to be together. So this is the story of Elisa and Marcela. Picture it 1880s Spain at Lisa Sanchez Lauria and Marcela Grazia us first met while training to be school teachers in Macedonia are Caronia is in Galicia, which is in the upper left side of Spain. And at that time, a lot of the Galician population was illiterate. So being a teacher was a very, very big deal. And it Lisa and Marcela fell in love. But it was 1880s in Spain, as I said, so there are some problems. Yeah, because they're both women. And Marcel, his mom was not here for any of this. She sent Marcela off to Madrid to separate her from Elissa. And then a decade later, they were both sent to village schools to teach. And they happen to only be a couple of miles apart, and they reconnected and again, I want to go back to the part where it's 1880s. There's no Twitter, there's no texting. There's like letters. Yeah. How do they find each other? I don't know. But they found each other again, at least a walked the seven miles between the villages of Doumbia and Gallo every single night. And in 1901, they came up with a plot, I love women who plot they decided they were going to plot to get themselves married. So a Lisa cut off her hair and posed as a man and took the name of her dead cousin Mario, as Mario, at least told the priest that he came from a family of atheists in London, and that's why the church had never heard of him. Wow. Right. So if you're going to go big, go with London atheism to cover your tracks. Right? If this be a lesson to So then, if he was an atheist from London in the church had never heard of him. Well, first, he had to be baptized. So he was baptized in the parish of San Jorge. Marcella in the meantime, was pregnant, and they decided to use this as part of their plan. Now, sources do not indicate who the father was, but she was most definitely pregnant. They were baptized and married by the Catholic Church, the first ever legal same sex marriage between two women in Spain. Now I did find evidence that there had been a marriage between two men in the Middle Ages also in Spain. And it wasn't figured out for a very very long time because the person who married these two people may not have known that they were both men. But same sex marriage between two women in Spain, done by the Catholic Church. Very big deal. Because again, I say 1880s. So you, lovely listener, if you are thinking I want to see this picture, I want to see these hairstyles, of course, you do go to our Instagram, look at their wedding portrait. It is incredible. And it's kind of amazing to me that photographic evidence has lasted, that we have this picture. I mean, they were on the front page of the newspaper, which like was totally not great for them. But it's really lovely that we can see them. And they look really happy. They look lovely. Yeah. And these are two
people who are like Catholic Church cannot topple us. We are too powerful. They look like a unit. I love it so much. So then guess what happens? Things are bad things go bad. They went viral on Tick Tock 1880s version. So their picture was in the paper front page of La both they Galatea, which is the voice of Alicia. And their neighbors saw them were like, That's to women. That's not okay. And they were thrown in jail. And eventually, Elisa and Marcella had to run for their lives. So they went to Portugal. And they were in Porto, which I've been to, I recommend drink all the port. Marcella gave birth to her daughter, at least a still posed as a man going by the name Pepe. And then the Portuguese government found out they were there. And Spain was like, Hello, Hi, neighbor, would you please extradite and Portugal was like, Okay, give me one sec, and Marcella. And at least I got on a boat and went to Argentina. A little bit further away, a little harder to get to them. But they were sent to trial by the Portuguese government. And they were acquitted. But Spain was like, nananananana, send them back over here. So they fled to Argentina. They changed their names. Again, I don't know how they kept them straight. I took me a while to get used to my married name. So I mean, imagine changing your names this many times and your postpartum like, wow, well, I mean, to be fair, back then they just had to say their name was a different name. It wasn't like, I mean, I, I think about changing my name now. And I'm done. You have two names. I know. And it's just so much work. Like it's to change, like when you get married to change your name. I mean, it's all so much work. Nowadays. It's so much for this. I mean, they just had to one time they had to cut their hair and say like, Okay, I'm Mario. And then the second time, they just said they were someone else only. Logistically, it would be easier, but probably harder. I agree mentally to keep track of it. So Marcela became Carmen and Lisa became Maria. And they got worked in Argentina as domestic servants and they had a new plan to be together. And Lisa married a man named Christian Jensen, who was 20 years older than her. I believe he was Danish, and I believe he was somewhat wealthy. And then she said, I would really like my sister Carmen to come live. And after a while, Christian got suspicious because Elisa did not want to consummate this marriage. And they went to trial again, after that. The trail grows cold. We don't know what happened to her, or to Marcella. But we do have some new information. That's really really cool. Are you ready for this? Yeah. The church never had their marriage an old it is still that Oh, and there is a street named after them in a Corona in Galicia, you can go see it. There is now a Netflix film about them. So if you're thinking no way this happened? No, no, no, there's a whole movie on Netflix. You can get some popcorn and your favorite beverage and park yourself on the couch and watch this gorgeous love story. I mean, would you have ever had the courage to do something like this? dress up like a man marry other people run through three different countries keep changing your name, just to be with the person you love. I mean, I'd like to say I would but like, I can barely go to the grocery store some days. So I don't know. I don't know. This is like, it's a lot. You know, it's a lot to is. I would like to say yes. I would like to say like, Yeah, I'd go to the ends of the earth. And it's kind of amazing. Now, like, you can't deceive people for five minutes before all of an entire social media platform finds out and yet in 1880, Spain, they kept getting caught. All she had to do is cut her hair. And that was it. She was a new person. I mean, now they would just like the priests would just plug in, like Mario into the search engine. BE ALL OVER? I'm sorry. I'm searching London. atheists.com. And you're so there's so many. There's so many things that you can't do like with a digital footprint that you used to be able to get away. Yeah. Which is kind of a shame. I know. I know. And yet they managed. They managed to make it happen. I love them. But here is my favorite part. an Argentinian woman named Norma Graziella moody recently learned and that she is the great granddaughter of Marcela because a gentleman named narci. So they Gabrielle published a book and in Spanish, it's at least a Marcela amigos Yamame days, which is friends and lovers, and na O and Galician. I'm not as good at deletion. So forgive me if you speak Galatian Island dos Omis, which means beyond men.
How's that? Fred Seidel, she saw this picture on the cover of the book in the bookstore, and was like, hold the phone that looks like my great grandmother, I have a picture of her and this person looks very familiar and turns out that the woman on the cover, Marcela was her great grandmother. And that's how she discovered her great grandmother's true identity. So her kid, at least we know that her daughter grew up. Yeah. So How incredible is that? Alicia, what is your love to go to take us into the rest of the day today? I think the thing about the story that struck me the most is how they just did not give up. It didn't matter who they were trying to fool What hair they had to cut. I mean, it was only the whole Catholic Church, right? They weren't going to be together. Not only were they going to be together, they were going to be married because they recognize marriage as something important in their lives. I would say just, you know, be persistent and don't give up on on your relationship with each other. I agree, even if you have to follow the whole Catholic Church. And you know, if you're trying to get away with same sex marriage in 1880s in Spain, and your picture ends up on the cover of the newspaper. You just got to roll with it and probably run and then hope hope that your great granddaughter boss you in a bookstore. Thank you for listening to lovestruck daily she was still a CNA on a study on a motor Mundo nurse. Munden Oslo, Mundo and email are lovestruck Daliah Frolik Boondall media Etham Yen is Thomas and Instagram he Twitter at lovestruck daily, you can send us an email at lovestruck Daliah frolic dot media. If you have a love story, we want to hear it. Please send it to us, especially if you've watched this Netflix show. And in fact, we don't usually do this but here's some homework. Go watch the movie on Netflix. It's so good. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter at lovestruck daily Please don't miss this photograph. It is exquisite. And please leave a review subscribe and spread the word about the show. We love hearing from you and we love knowing that we're boosting your day. Our researcher is Jessie Epstein. Our editor is Jen Jacobs. We are produced by Abigail steckler and little Scorpion studios and Gillian Davis with executive producer frolic media. This is an I Heart Radio Podcast and for goodness sakes just kill it I'm in love with
