Enriqueta Marti: The Macabre Story of the Raval’s Vampiress

February 1912

We got located in the dark streets of Barcelona around the year 1912, specifically in the Raval neighborhood.

A dark neighborhood was full of strange dealings and people of low life as in all significant cities of the time.

To frequent its streets at night was dangerous.

These circumstances are favorable for criminals of all kinds where the cover of the night and its alleys make their dirty work easier.

A rumor spread through its streets, squares, markets, and neighbors' yards: a wave of child kidnappings.

The civil governor, Portela Valladares, tried to convince the population that it was:

"completely false the rumor that is spreading in Barcelona about the disappearance during the last few months of young boys and girls who, according to popular gossip, had been kidnapped."

Many minors had disappeared recently without a trace and overnight, and the social pressure was high: they needed a culprit.

The relatives of those children, generally of low social class and scarce resources, could do little or nothing.

Popularly known as the Raval or Poniente Street vampire, Enriqueta Martí is possibly one of the deadliest serial killers.

And she was much more than just a murderer.

Kidnapper, procurer, forger, child pimp and “curandera” were some of Enriqueta’s other crimes.

But let's start at the beginning:

Who was Enriqueta Marti?

She began at a very early age, in the world of prostitution, in different brothels in her hometown.

In 1895 she married painter Juan Pujalo, but the marriage did not last long since, according to her husband, Martí never gave up her great trade and led a double life.

During the day, he begged in the streets and charity houses, while at night, he wore wigs, jewelry, luxurious clothes and met in places where upper-class people frequented.

He knew how to mingle among the wealthy, who served as his clients and influences.

She was agile when it came to kidnapping children.

She took them by the hand, manipulated them while she took them with her, made them pass for her children, and changed their names, clothes, and appearance.

In 1909 she was arrested in her apartment in Minerva Street in Barcelona, accused of being the head of a brothel that sexually exploited children between three and 14 years of age.

But thanks to her clients, the case never went to court, and the process got forgotten.

One of her great fascinations was to use bottles filled with blood to practice obscurantism, as she was also a healer.

She used to take advantage of her small and defenseless victims. Some she forced into prostitution, and others she tortured and murdered.

From the corpses, she extracted almost everything: fat, blood, hair, bones, and entrails since she usually transformed them into powder.

For this reason, she had no problem disposing of the evidence.

She offered ointments, filters, poultices, and potions to cure all kinds of diseases that had no cure in traditional medicine.

Of course, she treated the dreaded tuberculosis of that time; high-class people paid him a lot.

The kidnapping of Teresita

Enriqueta kidnapped her last victim on February 10, 1912, Teresita Guitart Congost.

This time, the parents with more economic resources ensured that the news spread throughout the media.

The streets of Barcelona got filled with posters printed with the girl's image.

Widespread anger grew as rumors (or gossip) seemed to be confirmed, and the authorities had been extremely passive with previous disappearances.

A neighbor of Enriqueta's, Claudia Elías, revealed Teresita's whereabouts.

Then, on February 17, she saw a little girl with shaved hair looking out of a window in the inner courtyard of her staircase.

The lady was surprised, as she had never seen her before, and looked sad and malnourished.

At number 29, Calle de Poniente (now Joaquín Costa), the mezzanine is in the Raval neighborhood.

Claudia's suspicions soon reached the ears of the police, who, on February 27, entered the apartment and found two girls.

One of them was Teresita Guitard Congost and a girl named Angelita.

Teresita got returned to her parents after giving her a statement.

Girl only got separated from her mother for a few seconds, but it was enough for Enriqueta, who was waiting a moment, to take her home by the hand with the promise of giving her candy.

When she realized that she was being taken too far from home, Teresita wanted to return, but it was too late.

Enriqueta covered her with a black cloth, grabbed her by force, and took her to her apartment.

Enriqueta cut her hair and changed her clothes when she got home.

She told her that she would no longer be "Teresita from that moment on."

Instead, she would be called "Felicidad," her mother.

During the time she was kidnapped, Teresita never left the apartment.

Moreover, she was forbidden to look out of the windows.

Angelita's statements made the police's hair stand on end.

Before Teresita arrived at the house, another boy, five years old, named Pepito.

Angelita declared that she had seen how Enriqueta had killed him at the kitchen table.

Enriqueta did not realize that the child had seen her, and Angelita ran to hide in bed and pretended to be asleep.

At first, Enriqueta declared that Angelita was her daughter, but after it showed that she was lying, she confessed that she had stolen her from her sister-in-law just after her birth, who got led to believe that the child was the child had died at birth.

Healer

After finding Poniente Street, Enriqueta Martí Ripollés was arrested and taken to the Reina Amalia prison, an institution demolished in 1936.

When they inspected the apartment on Poniente Street, they found, in a locked room, the horror that Enriqueta Martí was hiding.

About fifty jars, jars, and basins with human remains in preservation: fat-made lard, coagulated blood, hair, skeletons of hands, bone dust, etc., all of human origin.

There were also jars with potions, ointments, and salves already prepared for sale, an ancient book with parchment covers, and a notebook with recipes and potions written in elegant calligraphy.

The woman was a healer; her raw material? Fat, blood, hair, and bones of the children she kidnapped and killed (from newborns to 9 years old).

Of course, the woman had no problem disposing of the bodies of her victims (she took advantage of absolutely everything).

Thus, Enriqueta offered her ointments, filters, poultices, and potions to "remedy" diseases that had no cure in traditional medicine, especially tuberculosis (very feared at that time).

Upper-class people paid large sums of money for these remedies that they considered magical.

Following the inspection, two more apartments where Enriqueta had lived were searched: a flat in Talleres street, the third one in Picalqués street, and a small house in Juegos Florales street, in Sants.

Human remains got found in false walls and ceilings in all of them. In the house garden on Calle de Los Juegos Florales, they found a skull of a three-year-old child and a series of bones corresponding to children of 3, 6, and 8 years of age.

Another house in San Feliú de Llobregat was the property of Enriqueta's family, where they also found remains of creatures in vases and jars and books of remedies.

Ten children identified as Enriqueta's victims got included in the summary.

Child Pimp

The Raval vampire also pimped children.

Her victims were children from impoverished families without resources.

In the Raval neighborhood, she ran a brothel that offered sexual services to children between 3 and 14 years old.

However, a mysterious black hand made the case file disappear.

Among the brothel's clients were highly influential personalities of the Catalan bourgeoisie, which, it is speculated, led to the loss of the case file.

Enriqueta led a double life:

By day he dressed in rags and frequented the city's suburbs, where he begged for alms and abducted children.

At night he would take his most expensive dresses, hats, and wigs out of the closet to enter places like the Liceu Theater or the brothels of the high bourgeoisie in search of clients.

Enriqueta was also never tried for her crimes.

On May 12, 1913, one year and three months after her arrest, she died, the cause of which is not very clear.

There are two versions:

• First, her fellow prisoners lynched her to death in one of the prison yards.
• The second that she died of uterine cancer.

Whatever the cause of her death, Enriqueta's trial was in the pre-trial phase at the time.

As a result, the problem got never held, and I never knew the whole truth about the case.

Several historians assure us that Enriqueta was not as ruthless as they say and that the newspapers embellished the case with a lot of fiction and sensationalism.

And the fact is that our murderer, after her arrest, made the front pages of all the newspapers.

Then, in April 1912, interest in "vampires" shifted sinking of the Titanic, which took the spotlight away from her.

The story of Enriqueta Martí fell into oblivion until, in the 21st century, she began to star in articles, books, novels, plays, films, and interesting literary-cultural routes through the Ciutat Vella of Barcelona, the old quarter of the city.

In popular culture

Literature

• The Diaries of Enriqueta Martí by Antonio Gracia José, Pierrot:

A novel that focuses on some alleged diaries that Enriqueta Martí wrote before she began her career as an assassin.

The author himself illustrates them.

• The mystery of Poniente Street by Fernando Gómez:

In February 1912, the disappearance of a three-year-old girl shocked every corner of Barcelona.

The investigation and subsequent discoveries revealed a series of macabre murders that shook a city that was going through the revolutionary hangover of the Tragic Week.

It sounds like fiction, but it is not.

Through the pages of this book wander a series of characters that help shape the story.

Many are individuals of flesh and blood, incapable of being the protagonists of their history.

Seen separately, they only have the anecdotal value, but as a whole, they converge to faithfully outline the true face of a ruthless criminal, Enriqueta Martí.

Enriqueta, a beggar by day and marquise by night, knows power from the darkest side.

Fresh blood is her precious commodity, children her suppliers, and a sick bourgeoisie her clients.

• La mala dona by Marc Pastor:

Inspector Moisés Corvo, a drinker, and gunman, like the street and listens to it, and in the road, there begins to get whispered talk of children who disappeared, children of prostitutes who keep silent out of fear.

So Corvo decides to ask, to embed himself in that Barcelona of 1912 that he knows so well. For duty and for a hobby, which has: taverns and brothels.

He asks who he should and shouldn't be in the Chalet del Moro and the Arrabassada casino until his superiors order him to leave.

But Corvo and his inseparable Juan Maisano are not stopped by just anyone, especially now that they begin to glimpse an evil woman, cold and calculating, who knows how to take care of herself very well, as far as we can see.

But not that well.

Not even the clients for whom she seeks minors and blackmails will be able to silence her crimes: much more cruel and depraved than Corvo was capable of imagining.

• The sky under Elsa Plaza's feet:

The case shocked Barcelona in 1912.

Enriqueta Martí, called by popular gossip "the vampire of the Raval" and "the bad woman," was besieged by all kinds of rumors from the very moment.

The police arrested her and accused them of making children disappear for the most aberrant purposes, turning them into objects of pleasure for the wealthiest classes to making ointments destined to provide immortality.

However, when a young and indomitable journalist puts all her efforts to discern what got hidden behind these spectacular cases of child disappearances and child exploitation,

It does not take long to emerge before her eyes a whole plot that bifurcates through the most unexpected scenarios: from the Parisian suburbs to the luxurious apartments of the Catalan high bourgeoisie, from the café concerts and brothels in the shadiest neighborhoods to the casinos and nightclubs of the highest class.

Theater

• La vampira del carrer ponent or Els misteris de Barcelona by Josep Arias Velasco.

• La vampira del Raval. Musical theater play inspired by the character of Enriqueta Martí, starring Pep Cruz, Mingo Ràfols, Roger Pera, Roser Batalla, Mercè Martínez, Lluís Parera, Jordi Coromina, Valentina Raposo and Óscar Muñoz.

Music by Albert Guinovart and directed by Jaume Villanueva. It premiered in December 2011 at the Teatro del Raval.

Cinema

• In the stop-motion animation short film directed by Anna Solanas and Marc Riba, Les becomes del Carrer de Ponent, released in 2010.
• Ricard Reguant is preparing for the production company Fausto PC the film adaptation of the story of Enriqueta Martí: La vampira de Barcelona for 2011, with a premiere date in 2012. With screenplay by Miguel Ángel Parra and Iván Ledesma.
• In the 2011 Spanish film Diamond flash, directed by Carlos Vermut, the character of Enriqueta got inspired by Enriqueta Martí.

In the film, Enriqueta controls an organization dedicated to kidnapping children.

• In 2020, the film La vampira de Barcelona was released, directed by Lluís Danés from a script co-written by Lluís Arcarazo and María Jaén.

The premiere took place at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award.

Television

• The programs death with 20 and 35 first season of Fourth Millennium, broadcast in 2006, discussed the subject of the so-called vampire.
• In the second season of The Ministry of Time, the maid in Amelia Folch's family's house revealed Enriqueta Martí in episode 18, entitled (Separated by time).
• In the Uruguayan television program Anonymous voices of Teledoce, the story of Enriqueta Martí got mentioned in the episode titled "Emi, my best friend."

Sources:

• https://www.audible.es/Crimenes-que-estremecieron-a-Espana-Audiolibro Trujillo García, Antonio
• https://es.wikipedia.org
• https://culturacolectiva.com
• https://www.nosabesnada.com
• https://khronoshistoria.com
• https://www.planetainsolito.es