Pía Adriasola Barroilhet (61, Santiago), wife of President-elect José Antonio Kast for 34 years, will become the new first lady of Chile from next March. Although Gabriel Boric’s government abolished this position, the Republican has already announced that this role “does not stop”. During the campaign, the lawyer not only accompanied the candidate to different corners of the country and at rallies, but also had her own guidelines, where she emphasized her warmth and love of music. He also participated in the meeting at the home of Cecilia Morel, widow of former center-right president Sebastián Piñera, where he asked her what the institutional role entailed, in view of her next four years.
“Just because someone decided the position was going to end doesn’t mean the role of first lady ends,” Kast said after the meeting with Morel a few weeks ago. “It’s much more than a position, it’s a role, and that’s what we also received from Cecilia Morel, explaining to us what the first lady is implying,” he added. First ladies, historically, have taken charge of a series of foundations of the socio-cultural network of the presidency, a tradition which saw its end with the coming to power of Boric, at the request of his then girlfriend, Irina Karamanos. It turned out that Adriasola wants to mark her role, as in the past, for example, Luisa Durán -wife of the socialist Ricardo Lagos- did it with the dental care program “Sonrisa de Mujer” or Morel herself, with the “Choose Living Healthy” system, which seeks to promote healthy habits and lifestyles. However, there is still no detailed plan for what her crusade will be and how it will relate to foundations previously led by first ladies.
Adriasola, who defines herself as affectionate, sociable, “Latin”, has a social vocation which exploded during her husband’s three campaigns. In the latter, one of his main appearances took place at the end of August, when he arrived behind the wheel of a truck with a large Chilean flag on the side, as part of the launch of the Kast campaign in Antofagasta. The image was a wink to women all terrain of the mining area.
Adriasola’s childhood was spent in a rural area in the south of Santiago, which became urbanized over the years and is today known as Bajos de Mena, one of the popular middle-class towns in the municipality of Puente Alto. The family’s economic situation was “very precarious”, as the Charismatic Missionary Church International (MCI) YouTube program describes in 2021. The plot had no drinking water and they extracted it from a dam with a pipe and then treated it. The nearest street served by public transportation was six kilometers from the house. Adriasola told the show that, despite the unfavorable context, the arrival of each child was celebrated as a party. This education made her understand that she wanted to be a mother: the Schoenstatt movement activist had nine children with Kast.
When Adriasola took the exam to enter university, he was wondering whether he should study music, English or kindergarten. Eventually, she enrolled in law at the Catholic University of Chile because, as she said, she wanted to learn something that she couldn’t cultivate in the role of mother she wanted to play. One day before classes started, she went with a friend to the educational center and saw a very thin, blond, blue-eyed second grader receiving the new ones. The boy who caught his attention was José Antonio Kast. When he introduced himself, with deep shyness, he told her that he was “Anton”.
The first invitations to go out were always in groups until the young man of German origin dared to be alone with her and they went to mass. They became a couple and the relationship lasted a little over a year. The personality difference was crucial: she loved to dance, sing, socialize and talk about her feelings. Kast, on the other hand, was closed off, cold and devoted to his studies. Each teamed up again, but they met again in October 1988. Communication problems and lack of time also returned. At that time, Kast was already involved in university politics and Adriasola felt “super neglected and insignificant” in her partner’s life, as she told the Saturday Magazine. The priest Horacio Rivas suggested to them the “Tuesday of pololeo», a fixed space on the agenda to share.
They married in 1991 and moved to Paine. He promised to leave politics and devote himself to his father’s business, owner of the Bavarian delicatessen company and gourmet chain. Adriasola’s father-in-law gave her an office where she opened a studio with a friend. The couple have two children a year and a month apart and domestic chores and work responsibilities are beginning to worry the lawyer. Adriasola wanted to stop for a while before having her third child, so she went to the doctor, who gave her birth control pills. Kast replied that they could not be used and they again went to a priest, who told them they were forbidden and told them about natural methods to avoid pregnancy. In the same interview with Saturday Magazineshe said she “understood” that men “are always fertile and that women are sometimes fertile”. Since then, they have used the natural method and had six more children. Adriasola stopped practicing law.
In 1996, while expecting their fourth child, her husband asked her permission to run for mayor of Buin. At that time, they already lived on a 5,000 square meter plot of land next to the Bavarian sausage factory and were neighbors with Kast’s parents. She agreed, on the condition that he involve her in the campaign. They would go out late at night to knock on doors, and Adriasola would connect with field work and one-on-one conversations in homes, neighborhood meetings, and churches. Kast lost, but remained an advisor and never left politics again.
For the 2017 presidential campaign, her husband’s first, Adriasola participated extensively, visiting cities in different regions during the day, only to return home to sleep. After this failed attempt and the attack suffered by her husband in Iquique in March 2018, the lawyer created the Cuide Chile Foundation, whose motto is Taking care of the fundamental rights of Chileans. The foundation worked in lobbying Congress as laws were being discussed that Adriasola said affected children and youth regarding their gender identity and early sex education. In 2020, he participated in the Education Commission of the Chamber of Deputies to address the bill on sex education. “Sex is really safe when it is not practiced. There, it is prevented. When you do not have sex, there is no possibility of finding yourself waiting for a bus, or of having sexually transmitted diseases,” he said.
In a letter published in 2018 in The ThirdAdriasola defined herself as a “feminist” – according to the meaning of the RAE, she clarified – but she criticized the flags waved by the third wave of the movement, very strong that year in Chile. She said she represents those who will not participate in protests “where the values and beliefs of millions of women are offended.” During her husband’s second attempt to occupy La Moneda, in 2021, she was no longer as involved in the candidacy. The couple decided that she would take care of the house and he would take care of the countryside. “I am the foreign minister and she is the interior minister,” Kast explained on the Spanish podcast Aladetres. Now they both arrive in La Moneda, he as president and she as first lady.
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