Maria del Pilar Acedo y Sarria, daughter of José Acedo, Count of Echauz and Mara Luisa Sarria Villafa e, Countess of Vado, was born in Tolosa on March 10, 1784.
Both his father and his uncles were linked to the Royal Basque Society of Friends of the Country . From a very young age, as a consequence of the unpleasant events that occurred during the War of the Convention , also called the War of the Pyrenees, he had to face the reality of a fragmented society.
His early childhood was spent in the streets of his hometown. The War of the Pyrenees made her family home move to Vitoria where, in 1800, she married a young man who had just been Deputy General and was twice her age. Although her family enjoyed an enviable social position, as was customary among families of her rank, her marriage was the result of an agreement her family and that of her future husband, Ortu o María de Aguirre y del Corral , son of the second president of the Royal Basque Society and from whom he inherited the title of Marquis of Montehermoso upon his death.
Endowed with great sensitivity and fine intelligence, she enjoyed a careful education that she cultivated throughout her life. He spoke and wrote Basque, as a family language, in addition to Spanish, French, English and Italian. He played the piano and the guitar and painted, with a certain grace, miniatures. Passionate reader, educated, and committed to the ideals of her time, liberal, Frenchified and enlightened.
In the family home in Vitoria, a meeting place for important travelers of that time, he put together an important library with a large number of works, including all those of the Enlightenment . It was normal for him to direct the gatherings and his opinion was highly respected among those who attended them.
After the promulgation of the Constitution of Bayonne, a text of which her husband was one of the signatories, King José Bonaparte and his entourage chose her house for the first official meal after their arrival in Spain. There they met. During the reign of José, they moved to the court, occupying the Marquis various positions in it. Mar a Pilar and the king maintained a passionate idyll that was never kept a secret. After her husband died in 1811, the relationship settled and she even acted as first lady, which earned her the hatred of the people, contrary to King José.
At the end of the Napoleonic War, after the Bourbon restoration with the return of Ferdinand VII , she was expelled from Spain and her property confiscated. She did not see José again after his return to Paris.
He went on to live in Carresse, a small town in Béarn through which the Nive flows. Very soon the place became a meeting point for Spanish liberal thinkers. Among them were some of her relatives and her daughter María Amalia de las Nieves, to whom she was very close, despite the fact that her parental authority had been taken away. She was married to José María de Ezpeleta and was painted by Goya , a great friend of the Marchioness.
At her new residence, in 1818, she married an officer of Napoleon's hussars: Jacques Am de de Caraben. He died on February 27, 1867, at the age of 81.