Amalia Domingo Soler
Amalia Domingo Soler (Seville, 10 November 1835 – Barcelona, 29 April 1909) was a Spanish writer, novelist, and feminist, who also wrote poetry, essays, short stories, as well as an autobiography, Memorias de una mujer.
She founded and edited a spiritist weekly, La Luz del Porvenir, characterized by its radical views and feminist orientation.
She is born into a broken family, as her father is absent, leaving her mother with an income that he thinks will be enough to support them both.
Three days after her birth, she began to suffer from an illness in her eyes that would last her entire life and that would cause her mother to dedicate herself solely and exclusively to caring for Amalia and educating her.
The socio-cultural context in which Amalia lives, together with the illness and death of her mother, are two elements that will especially condition her life.
She continues to frequent the evangelical chapel on Calatrava Street, where she goes together with her friend Engracia de Ella, and where she had managed to be known.
She continues to hear the sermons of the evangelists who sometimes manage to convince her with her arguments, although other times, she is the one who mentally refutes them.
She gets a spiritist family to give her The Book of Spirits, although she can only read it for 30 minutes in the morning, resting every 20 lines.
One morning, when she was fixing a tunic (she sews for 15 minutes at a time), she unexpectedly regains her vision, opening up a new life for her.
On the one hand, the directors of the magazines in which she collaborates insist on the need for her to continue writing, as her articles are highly commented on and valued as they are written in a plain and accessible language that everyone understands.
As she is known throughout Spain, a spiritualist family from Alicante sends her the money to make the trip and invites her to their house.
In May 1876, she received a visit from two Catalan spiritualists with the proposal from Luis Llach, then president of La Buena Nueva de Gracia, that she move to Barcelona and dedicate herself entirely to writing.
The spiritualists, aware of her hardship, help her by giving her stamps, paper, envelopes, ink, a writing pad.
At the end of August 1877, an article was published in El Diario de Barcelona in which atrocities were said about Spiritism.
It will continue to be published until an amnesty makes the publication of La Luz del Porvenir possible again.
Amalia's work does not end with the publication of the weekly but is enhanced with actions in other fields, meeting the needs of the most disadvantaged, collecting aid for those affected by the floods in Murcia, visiting prisoners in the prisons of Barcelona, visiting hospitals to give comfort with his presence and his words to as many people as need it.
She talks about it with her friends and one of them, Eudaldo Pagés, an unconscious medium, enters a trance and gives her the first communication on behalf of Father Germán.
A collaboration begins between Amalia-Eudaldo-Father Germán that will give momentum to many good writings, and will also help her illustrate practical cases, stories of common lives collected through press clippings sent to her from all over Latin America and Spain and that are explained through the Law of Cause and Effect.
Her work is so great that the magazine El Buen Sentido of Lérida promotes a popular subscription that helps Amalia cover her expenses in the form of a perpetual pension.
Once this pension is over, she will continue living with the help of Luis Llach, who considers her another member of his family and who will not abandon her until her death.
Correa Ramón, Amelina, “Librepensamiento y Espiritismo en Amalia Domingo Soler, escritora sevillana del siglo XIX”, Archivo Hispalense (Sevilla), t. LXXXIII, n.º 254, septiembre-diciembre de 2000, pp.
Teoría, historia, invención (Andrés Soria Olmedo y Miguel Ángel García, eds.
Correa Ramón, Amelina, “Post Tenebras Lux: Contraste y continuidad entre las dos etapas de la santa laica del espiritismo finisecular Amalia Domingo Soler.
