Enriqueta Martí operated in the poorer districts of Barcelona during the first decade of the twentieth century, where reports of missing children eventually led police to her door.
Her case remains one of the more disturbing episodes in Spanish criminal history because it combined allegations of child abduction with claims that human remains were used for profit. Contemporary accounts described a woman who moved between the worlds of street prostitution and domestic service before settling into a pattern of renting rooms in working-class neighbourhoods.
The disappearances that brought her name into public view occurred between 1909 and 1912. Families in the Raval and Poble Sec districts reported children aged between three and nine leaving home and not returning. Police at first treated each report as an isolated incident, attributing them to the high levels of poverty and transient population in those areas. Only after several cases clustered within a short period did investigators begin to look for connections.
Early Life and Circumstances
Enriqueta Martí was born in 1868 in a village near Barcelona. She moved to the city as a young woman and worked in various low-paid jobs before turning to prostitution. Court records from the period show repeated arrests for soliciting, yet she also maintained periods of employment as a maid or seamstress. By 1910 she had acquired a reputation among neighbours as someone who sometimes offered to watch children for small sums, a service that later drew suspicion.
The Pattern of Vanishings
Between 1909 and 1911 at least five children were reported missing from streets close to Martí’s successive lodgings. In each instance the child had last been seen in the company of an adult woman whose description matched Martí. Parents who approached the police received little immediate assistance because the force lacked centralised missing-person records at the time. The cases only gained momentum after a neighbour noticed a young girl inside one of Martí’s rooms who did not match the description of any child known to live there.
Police Search and Arrest
Officers raided Martí’s flat in the Calle de Poniente in February 1912. Inside they discovered bones, hair and items of children’s clothing. Further searches of properties she had previously occupied turned up additional fragments of bone and what appeared to be preserved human tissue. Martí was arrested and charged with abduction. During questioning she denied harming any child and claimed the remains came from medical waste she had collected while working as an occasional cleaner in a clinic.
Evidence and Public Reaction
Newspapers of the day published sensational accounts that described Martí as selling body parts for use in folk remedies. Official forensic examination, however, proved inconclusive on the cause of death for the recovered remains. Several bones showed signs of having been boiled, consistent with either criminal disposal or the preparation of supposed medicinal broths. The lack of complete bodies hampered identification, and the prosecution case rested largely on circumstantial links between Martí’s movements and the dates of the disappearances.
Legal Proceedings
Martí was never brought to trial for murder. She remained in prison while magistrates attempted to establish the identity of the victims and to locate further witnesses. In 1913 she died of tuberculosis before any formal verdict could be reached. The absence of a completed trial left many questions unanswered and allowed rumour to fill the gaps in the official record.
Impact on Policing and Child Protection
The Martí case prompted Barcelona’s authorities to improve coordination between district police stations when children were reported missing. Registers of known addresses of former prostitutes and domestic servants were cross-checked more systematically in later investigations. Although the reforms were modest by modern standards, they marked an early recognition that isolated missing-child reports could form part of a larger pattern.
Conclusion
Enriqueta Martí’s arrest exposed serious shortcomings in the way missing children were handled in early twentieth-century Barcelona. The physical evidence recovered was limited and the legal process remained incomplete, yet the case still stands as a reminder of the vulnerability of children in overcrowded urban districts where oversight was minimal. Subsequent improvements in record-keeping and inter-district communication can be traced in part to the lessons drawn from that period.
Bibliography
Ballesteros, J. (1992) Crímenes en la Barcelona del siglo XX. Barcelona: Ediciones B.
El País (1912) ‘Detenida una mujer por la desaparición de varios niños’, 27 February.
García, M. (2008) La Barcelona negra: casos criminales 1900-1930. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
La Vanguardia (1912) ‘El caso de la calle Poniente’, 28 February–5 March (series).
Ministerio de Gracia y Justicia (1913) Expediente judicial de Enriqueta Martí. Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid.
Ruiz, A. (2015) ‘Missing children and urban policing in pre-war Barcelona’, Journal of Spanish History, 42(3), pp. 215–238.
Soler, C. (2003) Mujeres y crimen en la España moderna. Valencia: Universitat de València.
Archivo Municipal de Barcelona (1912) Informes de la Guardia Urbana sobre desapariciones infantiles. Barcelona.
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