Alicia Escapes the Asylum, Is Captured, and Returned to the Ward

Alicia Escapes the Asylum, Is Captured, and Returned to the Ward marks the reversal of Alicia’s attempt to turn apparent freedom of movement into a real escape. She leaves the hospital grounds, changes her route to mislead pursuers, and walks west through unfamiliar countryside. But a radio broadcast makes her recognizable, and her flight ends when a shepherd knocks her down and calls the Guardia Civil. The return is more than a failed journey: Alicia awakens in the Dementia Ward Known as the Lion Cage, the place whose conditions had earlier represented the hospital’s most extreme confinement.

The Opening and the Missed Ride

The escape takes shape amid the asylum’s open-regime policy, under which patients could move through the building and grounds and, in some circumstances, leave the hospital for nearby towns. That permission was relative, however, and subject to rules and exceptions. For Alicia, whose admission papers classified her as an involuntary patient despite her belief that she had entered voluntarily, the difference between movement within the grounds and freedom to leave had decisive consequences.

On the morning of the attempt, Alicia had been saving food. She had said that she was not hungry at ordinary mealtimes but became ravenous later, and carefully set aside bread, fruit, and a piece of omelet. After breakfast she kissed Ignacio Urquieta again; this time the kiss was an embrace of farewell. The food and the leave-taking give the morning a practical and emotional direction: she is preparing to depart, while acknowledging a relationship she expects to leave behind.

At the gate, Alicia sees a van and the attendant Guillermo Terrón signaling to el Albaricoque, who is hurrying toward it in civilian clothes with a small bundle. Alicia asks Terrón whether he is going to La Fuentecilla and whether he can take her. The exchange does not secure her a place in the van. She calls after him to return, realizing that she has something with her, but the opportunity passes. The open gate has offered a glimpse of an exit, not a guaranteed means of escape; Alicia must make her own way out.

A Deliberate Change of Route

Once beyond the immediate grounds, Alicia uses misdirection rather than simply taking the most direct road. She initially runs along the shortcut toward La Fuentecilla, intending to make searchers look for her there. Meanwhile, she plans to head toward a different village, one with no direct road connection to either the asylum or La Fuentecilla. The detour turns the landscape into part of her strategy: the first direction is a false trail, while the real route leads away from the places where she expects to be sought.

Alicia reaches Aldehuela de doña Mencía late in the afternoon, exhausted from walking. The village offers no safe refuge. In its tavern, she tries to make a telephone call, but the number she hoped would connect her to a useful contact instead reaches a wine-representation company that knows nothing of the previous tenant. She hangs up and pretends to call a repair shop. The failed call leaves her without the help she sought and forces her back onto the road.

As she pays, a radio broadcasts a description of a dangerous woman who has escaped from the asylum: jeans, a checked shirt, a cream jacket, low shoes, tall, blonde, and well-built. Alicia suspects the warning may identify her. She leaves without waiting for her change and heads toward a distant pine wood, continuing west. In the trees she rests, eats bread and an apple, and smokes a cigarette. She consults a drawing Ignacio Urquieta had made, using it to work out where the road between Orbegozo and Quintanilla should cross her westward course. The saved provisions and the map now become tangible parts of an escape plan, but neither can shield her from the public warning.

The Roadblock and Capture

When Alicia reaches the vicinity of the road, she sees two uniformed members of the Guardia Civil. They are unmistakable even at a distance because of their tricorn hats. The sight stops her: she had intended to reach the road and either hitch a ride or take a bus, but the officers make that route dangerous. She crouches out of view and watches the movement around the road rather than approaching it.

Her concealment does not last. After she has walked only a few steps, a sharp pain strikes her left shoulder blade and she falls face down. For an instant she thinks she has been shot; the blow came from a stone. A mastiff is close to her face, and the shepherd who has brought her down threatens to crush her head if she moves. He calls out that he has caught the escaped woman and summons the officers. The capture is both abrupt and physical: the careful changes of direction that had delayed pursuit end with a stone, a dog, and a shepherd holding her still until help arrives.

Return to the Lion Cage

The narrative follows the pain into a sudden blackout. When Alicia awakens, her despair comes from recognizing where she is. The next scene is framed by the Lion Cage, the asylum’s ward for its most profoundly impaired residents. An earlier account of the ward describes patients who depended on staff to dress them, feed them, take them to bed, and attend to their basic bodily needs. That contrast gives her return its force: the open grounds and the roads beyond them have given way to a space defined by intensive dependence and confinement.

The escape therefore ends not at the boundary of the hospital but at a deeper threshold within it. Alicia’s own admission had been processed as involuntary, and the legal status she had disputed helps explain why leaving the grounds did not settle her claim to freedom. The open regime had permitted considerable movement, but it had not removed the institution’s power to contain her. Her attempt demonstrates the gap between being allowed to walk through a gate and being able to leave the asylum behind; the final recognition of the Lion Cage makes that gap the event’s decisive consequence.