Speak the Culture: Spain: Be Fluent in Spanish Life and Culture

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1. Identity: the
   building blocks of
   2. Literature
   and philosophy
   3. Art and
   architecture
   4. Performing
   arts
   5. Cinema
   and fashion
   6. Media and
   communications
   7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
   the details of

Bodas de Sangre(1932)

Lorca took the murder story from an Andalusian newspaper. A young bride flees her

wedding in the arms of an old flame but the couple are hunted down and tragedy

ensues. Symbolism runs through the work, most notably in the shape of death played

by a vagrant woman. Stirring stuff.

Yerma(1934)

This time the husband of the titular female gets the chop. But our sympathies are

drawn to Yerma, desperate to have children and treated like an inferior. Again, Lorca

proved how symbolism and poetry could have popular appeal in drama.

La Casa de Bernarda Alba(1934)

A widow keeps her five adult daughters in isolation to avoid any shenanigans in a

small Spanish town. When one falls in love, the repressive maternal regime leads

to her suicide. The lack of any male characters adds to the play’s air of repressed

sexuality. Lorca’s talent for allegory and poetic drama collided here brilliantly.

Theatre under siege: drama in the Franco years

Theatre appeared to suffer more than literature under

Franco. Movements and playwrights emerged but there

was no new Lorca. Perhaps there would have been but

for censorship – the work of Lorca himself was banned

until the 1960s. Predictably, regime-friendly drama

ruled the stage, largely escapist in nature and often set

in some exaggeratedly glorious Spanish past. An old

hand like Benavente kept his head down and wrote

uncontroversial comedies. Alfonso Paso was similarly

timid, steering clear of controversy but performing

well at the box office with entertaining plays. Anything

of more penetrating content tended to moralise to

its audience rather than challenge the status quo.

You can’t blame the crowds for favouring escapism: light

entertainment and musicals offered brief respite from

the drudgery of theaños de hambre.

Lorca’s rural trilogy

He’s having a
laugh isn’t he?
Lorca’s first play,
El maleficio de la
mariposa(1919)
broached the little
explored subject of love
between a cockroach
and a butterfly (it was
a Symbolist work).
A supporting cast of
other insects failed to
stop the play being
laughed off stage after
four performances.

Lorca and company
In 1932 Lorca
collaborated with fellow
playwright Eduardo
Ugarte to form La
Barraca, a company of
students that toured
rural Spain with new
versions of national
classics. They took their
lead from the brief
Second Republic whose
government had formed
the Teatro del Pueblo
with similar intentions
the year before.

Salvador Dalí created
the sets and costumes
for Lorca’s second play,
Mariana Pineda, when it
first took to the stage in
Barcelona in 1927.