This black statue, slightly larger than normal, represents Emili seated, it seems sit on a throne or chair. Of grand "movement" are the waves of her vintage dress.
"Author: Lorenzo Coullaut Varela.
Location: gardens of Méndez Núñez, near the Paseo de Coches.
Characteristics: round sculpture made of sandstone. Surrounding the sculpture is a balustrade of the same material and topped by two large pillars with large vases. Three bronze plates appear on the stone."
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Biography
"Emilia Pardo Bazán was born on September 16, 1851 in La Coruña , a city that always appears in her novels under the name " Marineda ". The only daughter of José Pardo Bazán y Mosquera and Amalia de la Rúa Figueroa y Somoza, she received a careful education.
An indefatigable reader since she was eight years old, at the age of nine she composed her first verses, and at fifteen her first story, " A marriage of the 19th century ", which she sent to the Almanac of the National Sovereignty , and which would be the first of the many stories -near of 600- that he would publish throughout his life .
His training was completed in the capital of Spain, where the family used to spend the winters, due to the political activities of his father, a militant in the liberal progressive party.
The year 1868 is a milestone in Emilia's life: Three important events in my life were closely followed: I dressed long, got married and the Revolution of September 1868 broke out . Emilia was sixteen years old, and her husband, José Quiroga, a law student, twenty. The wedding took place on July 10 in the chapel of the Meirás farm, owned by the bride's parents.
In 1873 the Pardo Bazán family - also the newlyweds - temporarily left Spain. The trip continues through several European countries, which awakens in Emilia the concern for languages, with the desire to read the great authors of each country in their original language. His intellectual restlessness is increasing and, upon returning to Spain, he comes into contact with Krausism through Francisco Giner de los Ríos , with whom he would become a great friendship. The influence of the Krausists pushes her to read the mystics and Kant , and these, in turn, lead her to Descartes , Saint Thomas, Aristotle and Plato .
Portrait of Emilia Pardo Bazán with a baby on her lap, c. 1876-1800 (Galician Source: Biblioteca Dixital de Galicia).
In 1876, the year of the birth of her first child, Jaime, she became known as a writer by winning the contest called in Orense to celebrate the centenary of Feijoo . These are years in which he has not yet totally abandoned poetry. Thanks to Giner de los Ríos, the book of poems by Doña Emilia, entitled Jaime , was published in 1881 .
The fondness for the fictional genre is not early in Doña Emilia, who considered the novel a minor genre, a mere pastime, preferring to complete, following an order, her intellectual training, in which she found many gaps.
However, knowledge of the works of her contemporaries encourages her to write her first novel, Pascual López. Autobiography of a medical student , shortly before accepting the direction of the Revista de Galicia , in 1880.
In 1881 he published Un viaje de novios , a novel for which he used the experiences of a trip to France, and that summer, in Meirás, San Francisco de Asís finished , already pregnant with his third daughter, Carmen. The prologue of Un viaje de novios is very important to understand what naturalism means in the work of Emilia Pardo Bazán, as well as the series of articles that she publishes between 1882 and 1883 under the title of The palpitant question , that of naturalism, literary current which he unveiled in Spain.
Cover of «Los pazos de Ulloa», Barcelona, ??Daniel Cortezo y C.ª Editores, 1886 (Source: Biblioteca Digital Hispánica)
In this naturalistic line, the third novel by Doña Emilia, La Tribuna (1883), as well as the later ones of Los pazos de Ulloa (1886), Mother Nature (1887) and The angular stone (1891), although between La Tribuna and Los pazos de Ulloa writes Emilia Pardo Bazán a novel in which he departs from the naturalistic technique. This is El cisne de Vilamorta , in which he combines realistic observation with certain romantic elements. In addition, between Mother Nature (1887) and The Cornerstone (1891) he published four novels that cannot be considered naturalistic either:Insolación and Morriña , both from 1889 and set in Madrid, have been considered by critics within the coordinates of realism, and Una Cristiana and La Pruebas , both from 1890, as participants of a certain idealism, a trend that is also observed -with the parenthesis of The angular stone -, in the cycle of Adam and Eve , formed by Doña Milagros (1894) and Memories of a bachelor (1896).
In 1891 she embarked on a new journalistic adventure with Nuevo Teatro Critico , a magazine founded and written entirely by her, which both in its title and in its miscellaneous, cultural in a broad sense, and informative approach wanted to pay tribute to her admired Feijoo, and in 1892 she founded and begins to direct the Library of the Woman .
For some time now, Doña Emilia had been collaborating in numerous magazines and newspapers, with travel chronicles, articles, essays and numerous stories that she would group in several collections: Tales of Marineda , Tales of love , Sacred-profane Tales , En tram (Dramatic Tales) , Tales of Christmas and Kings , Tales of the homeland , Ancient tales ... And also in the press, in La Lectura , his novel La Chimera began to appear in 1903, that two years later would see the light as a book. Confirming his criterion that the novel should reflect the moment in which it is written, certain modernist and symbolist echoes can be appreciated in La Chimera .
Cover of «La sirena negra», Madrid, M. Pérez Villavicencio, Editor, 1908 (Source: Biblioteca Digital Hispánica).
In 1908 she published La sirena negra whose central theme is death, which she wrote at the Madrid Athenaeum, where she was appointed President of the Literature Section in 1906.
A tireless traveler, she also continues to record her impressions in newspaper articles and books. In 1900 his articles on the Universal Exposition in Paris appeared in El Imparcial , which were to be found in the book Forty days at the Exposition ; In 1902 he published Por la Europa Católica , the result of a trip to the Netherlands.
He had not yet tried to bring his plays to the stage , and in 1906 he premiered in Madrid, without success, Truth and Downhill .
Doña Emilia is a recognized figure in literary, cultural and social life. In 1908 she began to use the title of Countess of Pardo Bazán , granted by Alfonso XIII in recognition of her importance in the literary world; from 1910 she was counselor of Public Instruction; full member of the Matritense Society of Friends of the Country since 1912 ... Two years later the Band of the Order of Maria Luisa would be imposed on him, and he would receive from Pope Benedict XV the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross ... In 1916 the minister of Public Instruction appoints her Professor of Contemporary Literature of Neo-Latin Languages ??at the Central University.
On May 12, 1921 , a complication with his diabetes caused his death. The next day, all the press spoke of the writer who died the day before, who was buried in the crypt of the Concepción church in Madrid."
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