"In the spring of 1589, a year after the unsuccessful venture of the Invincible Armada on English shores, England was poised to exact its revenge. In those last years of the 16th century, Spain and England, two international powers, were fighting for dominance of the seas and hegemony in half the world and on the board, thousands of pawns were going to suffer the consequences. When the English troops arrived on the Galician coast, its people were not going to make it easy for them. Men, but also women, were at the forefront of the resistance. Of all of them, María Pita stood out for her courage and bravery.
The story of María Pita is part of that enormous battle that the Spanish and English fought on different fronts. Her real name was Mayor Fernández da Cámara Pita but a misunderstanding with the death of her sister María made her María Pita. He was born on an undetermined date around the year 1564 into a simple family. Maria was married four times. Her first husband, a butcher, left her with a daughter and an inheritance of land and several properties that allowed her to live relatively comfortably. Her second husband, the one who is part of the María Pita legend, died during the English attack on La Coruña.
It was the year 1589 and now Elizabeth I, with her privateer Francis Drake at the head, was preparing to put her enemy Philip II in check. Not only was he going to return the "visit" to his lands, but he was preparing to take away the Portuguese crown that King Prudent had appropriated in 1580 for dynastic reasons. Along with Drake was Don Antonio, prior of Crato, grandson of Manuel I of Portugal, who claimed for himself the throne that was then held by his distant cousin Felipe II.
La Coruña mobilized men, women and children who barricaded themselves in the square. At first, women exercised support and provisioning tasks for the troops, but the desperate situation in which the siege resulted forced all its inhabitants to fight against the enemy. When the forces began to diminish and the spirit of the Coruñeses faded, María Pita killed the English lieutenant and took his flag from him. Some say that it was because of the anger felt after the murder of her second husband in the middle of the siege that Maria grabbed a spear, an arquebus or a knife, according to the versions, and ended her life.
Photo: Tomás Fano - originally posted to Flickr as La Coruña. Maria Pita's statue. Galicia. Spain, CC BY-SA 2.0, (
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María Pita then became the standard-bearer of her own, shouting "Whoever has honor, follow me." Turned into a heroine, she continued fighting until the English withdrew from her coasts and headed for Lisbon where they would not achieve their objective of dethroning Felipe II from the Portuguese throne.
The value of María Pita was recognized by the king who granted her a pension and was given the title of "outstanding soldier". The same year of the siege in which she had lost her second husband, Maria remarried for the third time, this time to an infantry captain with whom she had another daughter. And again she became a widow again, in 1595. Four years later she married for the fourth time an official of the Royal Court, whom she became widowed in 1613. Since then, Maria has not remarried at the express wish of her last husband who put as condition so that his wife could enjoy his inheritance that he did not remarry.
María Pita, the heroine of La Coruña, died on January 21, 1643, having exceeded, if we accept her date of birth in 1564, eighty years of age."
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