Jacinta Coronado’s confinement and isolation

Jacinta Coronado’s confinement and isolation are the long aftermath of her effort to remain loyal to Penelope Aldaya in a household determined to control her. Expelled after eighteen years of service, threatened into silence, and later confined for two years in the Horta asylum, she loses both her place in the family home and any chance to learn what became of Penelope. Her frail, solitary old age makes visible the human cost of the Aldayas’ secrecy: Jacinta survives, but is left with a story whose central loss she cannot resolve.

Expulsion from the Aldaya Household

Jacinta’s isolation begins after Penelope tells her what happened when Penelope’s mother discovered her with Julian in Jacinta’s bedroom. The following day, Señora Aldaya orders Jacinta to keep Penelope locked in her room until further notice. When Don Ricardo returns from Madrid, his wife tells him what she witnessed. He strikes her, demands that she repeat the accusation, then drags Penelope from bed by her hair. Jacinta tries to intervene, but he kicks her aside. The family doctor examines Penelope; afterward, she is locked in her room, while Señora Aldaya orders Jacinta to collect her belongings.

The dismissal is also an enforced silence. Don Ricardo threatens to report Jacinta to the police if she tells anyone what has happened. That night, after eighteen years of uninterrupted service, she is turned out with nowhere to go and is not allowed to say goodbye to Penelope. Two days later, Miquel Moliner visits her at a pension on Calle Muntaner and tells her that Julian has gone to Paris. He wants to know why Penelope failed to meet Julian at the station, but Jacinta has already been cut off from the girl she had tried to protect.

The Asylum and the Denial of Her Story

For weeks Jacinta returns to the Aldaya mansion, begging for a chance to see Penelope. The gates remain closed to her; she waits at the opposite corner day after day, hoping to see the family leave, but Penelope never appears. Don Ricardo then calls in the police and, with the help of his influential friends, has Jacinta committed to the Horta lunatic asylum. His justification is that nobody knows her and that she is a demented woman harassing his family and children. Her attachment to Penelope is thus recast as evidence against her, and the household’s power turns her testimony into a diagnosis.

Jacinta spends two years locked up “like an animal.” On leaving, she goes straight to the house on Avenida del Tibidabo, only to find it locked and for sale. She is told the Aldayas have gone to Argentina. The letters she sends to the address she receives are returned unopened. Each attempt to recover contact ends in another closed door: first the mansion’s gates, then institutional confinement, then mail that comes back without reaching its recipients.

A Life Outside the House

Jacinta’s confinement does not end when she leaves the asylum. She never sees Penelope again, and the evidence offers no reunion, explanation, or confirmation of what happened to her. By the time Daniel and Fermín find Jacinta, she is living in her last days in a cold, dirty hovel. Their meeting takes place in a loft reached by a staircase on the third floor, in a hidden wing once associated with the rooms of Baltasar Deulofeu, also known as Laszlo de Vicherny, who directed The Tenebrarium’s activities. The setting’s history of concealed rooms and private worlds contrasts sharply with Jacinta’s present exposure and deprivation.

Fermín kneels beside her and takes her trembling, wrinkled hand. When she finishes recounting her history, she shakes her head and says she never saw Penelope again, then collapses into uncontrollable weeping. Daniel has further questions, but Fermín signals that the interview is over. He holds and rocks Jacinta; as Daniel leaves, he sees Fermín kneel again to kiss her forehead. Jacinta answers with a toothless smile. The gestures of care cannot undo her years of exclusion, but they give her account a witness and end the interview with tenderness rather than interrogation.

The Meaning of Confinement

Jacinta’s story complicates the notion that her suffering is simply a consequence of age or illness. The source of her isolation is social and political: the Aldaya family dismisses her, bars her from Penelope, threatens her, and uses its influence to have her confined. The asylum does not merely remove her from public life; it helps discredit her as a witness. Her pursuit of Penelope is interpreted through the powerful family’s account of events, leaving Jacinta without a credible route back into the household or a means of making her loss known.

The narrative reveals this history through Jacinta’s testimony to Daniel and Fermín, long after the events have taken place. Its emotional force lies partly in what remains unresolved: Jacinta can describe the confinement, the unanswered letters, and the return to an empty house, but she cannot tell Daniel what happened to Penelope. Her account therefore turns private bereavement into evidence of a broader pattern of enforced silence. The final image of Fermín beside the old woman briefly counters that pattern: Jacinta has been abandoned by the household and denied access to the person she loved, but at least her story is heard.