Instrucción de novicias : Vidas del convento barroco para guiar tu presente

Behind the walls of a convent, silence reigns, broken only by the murmur of prayers or the melismas of liturgical chants. Or so we tend to imagine, but the reality is quite different. In this space governed by women, the nuns of the 16th and 17th centuries developed a complex social network, encompassing work and creativity, fashion and fame, friendship and love, politics and economics, and proposing innovative solutions to the anxieties of worldly life. All of this would have remained a secret to the general public were it not for the exhaustive research and dissemination work carried out for over ten years by Carmen Urbita and Ana Garriga, the creators of the podcast Las hijas de Felipe (The Daughters of Philip). Thanks to them —and to the thousands of letters and treatises they have read— we have access to Teresa of Ávila's advice on sound financial management, María de Jesús de Ágreda's tricks for being in several places at once, Ana de Jesús and Beatriz de la Concepción's audacity in sustaining love against all odds, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's fury in freeing herself, centuries before Me Too, from the harassment of a confessor. We can glimpse this hidden world: a space created by women and for women, with different ways of loving, caring, organizing, creating, and living together. And, above all, we can see that everything we experience has already happened to a nun of the Baroque era.