After about four months, she was allowed to return home to Barcelona for Christmas, but was not allowed to go out alone. Somehow – and Mariona does not remember how – she managed to escape, but her escape was short-lived. Within hours she was put into a car with her father and uncle and taken back to Madrid.
“We arrived back at the convent in the evening,” she recalls. “I refused to go in. They dragged me down the stairs and gave me sedation to get me inside.”
Inside the convent, other young women were warned against talking to her – the rebellious girl who had the courage to try to escape. She became extremely lonely and eventually began refusing food.
Her dramatic weight loss resulted in her being admitted to a psychiatric clinic. She says there she was given two sessions of electric shock treatment, followed by what was called “insulin coma therapy.”
Mariona says she was injected with insulin to induce deep hypoglycemia – a coma-like state caused by low blood sugar. It was believed that this could alleviate psychotic or schizophrenic symptoms, and somehow “reset” the patient’s brain.
This was a “therapy” that was being discontinued in many countries for a simple reason: it could be fatal.
Mariona received an insulin injection in the morning. Later he will be brought out of coma and fed. She became mentally closed.
“Every day, I became more and more confused,” she says. “I started saying things like, ‘I hurt my parents.’
“I entered into this process of surrender and acceptance.”
Mariona believes that forced, intravenous “treatment” with insulin irreparably damaged her memory. Suspecting that this was causing her to forget things, she started keeping a diary. More than five decades later, this faded, papery document from 1971 will provide insight into Marina’s documentary about her mother’s experience.
Doctors believed the “treatment” would help Mariona gain weight – but that wasn’t happening.
“One day, the psychiatrist decided it would be better to try tying me to the bed until I could eat.”
Mariona’s despair became so unbearable that she contemplated taking her own life. The psychiatrist then gave him a target of 40 kilograms (sixth 4 lb). If he achieved this, they promised that he would be released from the clinic.