Pedralbes: seven centuries of women who defied kings and dangers

BarcelonaBehind the stone walls of the Pedralbes Monastery, countless generations of women have lived for seven centuries. Each corridor holds many stories, not only of prayer and introspective silence, but also of struggles, conspiracies, survival, and creativity. It is a rare and ancient place because neither the confiscations of church property, nor revolutions, nor dictatorships, nor even the voracious appetite for real estate, have been able to swallow it up. Those who entered were required to take vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, but for a long time it was a space where patriarchal power could be transcended. This year it celebrates its 700th anniversary with exhibitions, panel discussions, and the revelation of many of the secrets hidden within the tombs of a queen and the ladies who accompanied her. We invite you to explore all the spaces of the monastery through the lives of seven women, some powerful, others very humble.

The Pedralbes Monastery is full of symbolism. The tomb of Elisenda de Moncada is visible from the cloister, where she is depicted as a nun, wearing the Franciscan cord; and from the church, where she is shown as a queen, with a crown and mantle. The queen's message is quite clear. She wanted to remain symbolically present in the religious community she herself had founded, because every time the nuns passed through the cloister they saw the austere representation of the queen and prayed for her. On the other hand, she didn't want anyone to forget who she was outside the monastery. She had married James II (1267-1327) on Christmas Day in 1322, when the king was already elderly and in poor health. When he decided to build the monastery, the king wanted it to be built in Valldaura, but Elisenda insisted on Pedralbes, which was closer to the walled city of Barcelona. The queen wanted everything to move very quickly, because the king was quite ill. The foundation stone was laid on March 26, 1326, and a little over a year later, on May 3, 1327, the first Poor Clare nuns moved in. The king died in December of that year.

"Without children, her power within the palace would have been very limited. Widows who were not the mother of a future king usually met a rather sad end because they were sidelined at court. Elisenda de Moncada had a good relationship with the sons of James II, who always supported her, but she was very close to the court," explains Anna Castellano, director of the Pedralbes Monastery.

She never became a nun and continued to wield considerable power over the city from her palace attached to the monastery. She obtained exemptions from certain taxes from the Pope, and enjoyed economic independence and influence within the Church and society far superior to other monasteries, even those for men. Many women from the Catalan oligarchy came to Pedralbes, and the monastery had allies in positions of power. All of this made it exceptionally powerful and the possessor of a vast estate. The queen spent many more years at the monastery than with her husband. She died in 1364, at the age of 72, having resided with the community for 36 years.

Social differences and hierarchies were visible both inside and outside the monastery, even in the architecture itself. The lower floors housed the gardens, the service areas, and, near the work areas, the nuns who served as helpers. Among them were the slaves. In the 1520s, between 8.3 and 14.3% of the population of the city of Barcelona were slaves. There were Tatar, Circassian, Greek, Balkan, Sardinian, North African, and sub-Saharan slaves. It was a highly regulated business. In some cases, the slaves were part of the dowries of some of the novices entering the monastery. "Everything we know about the slaves comes from the account books, where they are mentioned because the monastery also bought them, or because they passed through the infirmary where they were cared for, or because some nuns stipulated that they wanted them freed upon their death," Castellano explains. "They were treated the same as the servants and could have a close relationship with the mistresses; we don't rule out the possibility that there were religious figures who could also teach the nuns," she adds.

While the professed nuns dedicated themselves to the contemplative life, continuous prayer, silence, religious reading and writing studies, and manual labor such as weaving and copying manuscripts, the slaves worked extremely long days and had practically no autonomy. They made bread, cooked legumes and vegetables, tended the fire and pots, prepared special meals for religious holidays, cleaned rooms, dormitories, the cloister, and common areas; they washed clothes... It is unknown where they slept or if they shared a room with the nuns. Those who certainly slept separately were the friars and priests who were also part of the community. Since the nuns could not celebrate Mass, they needed a priest. Furthermore, the friars were their confessors. But all were under the orders of the nuns. A small document kept in the monastery makes it quite clear: if the priests failed to comply, they could be deprived of bread and wine for as many days as the abbess and the convent deemed appropriate.

Despite the walls, the Poor Clares were not immune to the power struggles unfolding outside. The monastery possessed extensive assets and a high level of income, making it desirable to keep it under control. During the Catalan Civil War (1462-1472), which pitted Catalan institutions against John II of Aragon, the nuns had to abandon the monastery, as it became the latter's encampment. With the Trastámara victory, significant changes occurred at the monastery. While powerful Catalan families had previously controlled Pedralbes, from that moment on, open warfare ensued. Tradition dictated that if there was a Montcada, she would be chosen as abbess for life. This was the case with Violante de Montcada, but her election enraged John II's son, King Ferdinand II. To impose his will on the nuns, he denounced Violante to the Pope, claiming she was breaking the rules and frequently entering and leaving the monastery to attend to her own affairs. Isabella the Catholic's husband ordered a rigorous inspection. To avoid problems with the Catholic Monarchs, the abbess made community life more rigid, ordering more austere habits, adding more walls, grilles, and black cloths. Even so, there came a point when she could no longer endure the onslaught from Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, and she left. She did not surrender completely, however, because she went to Rome to plead for justice, and her position was reinstated. Even so, the monarchs did not yield. Ferdinand the Catholic sent his illegitimate daughter, Maria of Aragon, to the monastery. Violante, who must have been tired by now, having spent 37 years in the monastery, threw in the towel. She said goodbye with a touch of humor:Cousin, welcome. Your Highness and I, being both quite tall, cannot fit under the same roof."Maria of Aragon, whether following her father's orders or not, made some changes to make it clear who was in charge, such as commissioning an image of herself, which she installed in the refectory, where she also had her coat of arms painted."

At the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries, the Pedralbes Monastery experienced periods of financial hardship. It suffered the ravages of the Catalan Revolt (Guerra dels Segadors). Evidence was found during archaeological excavations in the stewardship houses on the Baixada del Monestir, where the community's servants lived: cannonballs were buried there. In 1697, the monastery was occupied by the French army, which took advantage of its strategic location to control the siege of Barcelona. In the infirmary, the nuns and lay sisters—who were nuns without formal education and who primarily performed manual labor—had a considerable amount of work. Despite these shortages, the infirmary was renovated at the end of the 16th century. It consisted of a series of interconnected rooms that allowed for the arrangement of several beds for the sick, with interior doors connecting the different areas. The space was bright and well-ventilated thanks to the large windows that allowed natural light and fresh air to enter, in contrast to other, darker and quieter areas of the monastery. There was a kitchen where special diets were prepared, and a small chapel. There was also a space dedicated to the preparation of remedies and medicines, where medicinal plants were kept and infusions, ointments, and poultices were made for different ailments. The nuns especially used plants such as sage, rosemary, thyme, chamomile, mint, and rue, and applied medieval herbal knowledge to treat digestive and respiratory problems, inflammations, and wounds.

The daughter of the Counts of Plasencia, María de Lanuza (1677-1754) entered the monastery when she was only 13 years old. "She is the most mystical nun we have," Castellano affirms. The Counter-Reformation (Council of Trent, 1545-1563) established a very strict policy of defending Catholicism against Protestantism. Mystics were figures who reinforced Catholic doctrine because they generated a certain moral and social authority and often had access to powerful patrons and civil and religious authorities. They lived their religion very intensely because they sought an intimate connection with God. To reach this experience, they sometimes undertook extremely long fasts and prayed until exhaustion. Lanuza embodies this mystical spirituality. In 19th-century documents, she is remembered as a nun with a precocious vocation, devout, penitent, and mortified. She suffered because she had a dislocated arm and spent hours upon hours in prayer. Dropsy caused his death and, according to the papers of the Pedralbes monastery, which are kept in its archive, he prayed until the last moment.

Neither the Peninsular War (1808-1809), nor the yellow fever epidemic (1821), nor the Carlist Wars, nor the Mendizábal confiscations (1835) could bring an end to the Pedralbes Monastery. Even so, throughout the 19th century, in order to survive, the community had to sell a large number of works of art, and others were stolen. If neither plunder nor conflict has been able to erase its history, it is largely thanks to... Mercè Anzizu (1868-1916) -became Sister Eulària Anzizu within the monastery—this nun, who performed practically all the roles in the auca within the monastery, but who never became abbess because she died very young, was left without parents and grandparents at the age of ten. She was not left destitute, however, because she belonged to one of the most powerful families of the time: the Güells. She had a vocation as a poet, but her spiritual mentor, Jaume Collell, did not allow her to publish any of her poems. They could only be read after her death. Jacint Verdaguer was her literary mentor and even mentions her in two of his poems. Year-round roseBefore turning 21, Anzizu renounced the luxurious travels and mansions of the Güell family to dedicate herself to religious life. She disliked the lifestyle and worldview of her wealthy family. Her independent and restless spirit demanded something different. It was her way of rebelling.

Eulalia, who made the cell at Santes Creus her own private chamber, organized and cataloged the important Historical Archive of the Community, wrote the first historical monograph on the monastery, and opened a small museum. She devoted a good part of her fortune to restoring various parts of the monastery.

The Second Republic brought significant changes to the Pedralbes Monastery, some positive, such as its declaration as a Historical-Artistic Monument, which recognized the architectural and heritage richness of the monastery. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the nuns went into exile in Italy, as Abbess Carme Nadal recounted, recalling the burning of the parishes of Sarrià and Bonanova. "After Vespers, I had to announce to the community that they had to leave immediately," Nadal wrote. In August 1936, the monastery was seized and became the refuge of thousands of works of art from the Republican government and from the Spanish government, as well as documents from 226 archives in Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon. The same room that had been used by Sister Eulalia became the office of the historian and archivist Agustí Duran Sanpere, who didn't leave the monastery even when the Francoists entered. When the nuns returned in January 1939, they found an occupied monastery. "We found that they wouldn't let us settle in; everything was crammed with archives, books, and all sorts of junk," explained one nun. The same nun lamented that they used the soldiers' iron beds to sleep on during the first few nights.

Over the years, the community dwindled. The last sister to enter the monastery did so in the 1990s. At the beginning of the century, there were still about twenty nuns, but most were elderly, and there were no new vocations. Attempts to attract new vocations from other monasteries were unsuccessful. The last abbess died in 2024 from a fall. At that time, only four nuns remained, an insufficient number according to the community's regulations, which require at least five nuns to elect an abbess. "It was a very difficult decision because they were emotionally very attached to the place," says Castellano. They chose to maintain their connection with Pedralbes through the foundation, even though they would physically move to another convent in Viloví d'Onyar in February 2025.