Catalan Theater Under Franco: Repression and Resilience

Catalan Theater: From Post-War Silence to Resurgence

The Post-War Landscape (1939-1950s)

The triumph of the dictatorship forced Catalan theater into silence, as performances in Catalan were strictly prohibited. This ban was rigorously enforced across Catalonia and Valencia, with only a few exceptions allowed in Mallorca. The Catalan theater scene between 1939 and 1946 presented a bleak picture. However, from 1946 onwards, the possibility of working in Catalan began to emerge. It was Josep Segarra who, in that year, released The Prestige of the Dead. These years also saw important premieres by Carlos Soldevila and Lluís Elías.

In the 1950s, as Franco's regime entered a new phase, the situation gradually became more permissive, thus more favorable to Catalan theater in Catalonia. Additionally, the arrival of a new bourgeois audience favored the emergence of melodrama, primarily cultivated by playwrights such as Josep Vendrell, Josep Tapias, and Santiago. Religious drama also appeared, though it had limited opportunities for performance and was not popular with the public. An independent theater movement began to emerge, reflecting a broader European artistic trend. While theater in the Balearic Islands and Valencia did not boast as rich a scene, independent theater groups also emerged there.

Manuel de Pedrolo: A Voice for Freedom

Manuel de Pedrolo earned a living working in an information office and through various editorial jobs, including literary advising, correcting, and translating. He cultivated all literary genres: essays, poetry, drama, and novels. All interested him; all he used to explain his thinking and to recreate new worlds, or to portray a complex, repressed society and imagine new possibilities, especially personal or collective liberation.

From his work as a playwright, we highlight Homes i No, Tècnica de Cambra, and La darrera versió (for now) – three of the thirteen plays he wrote between 1954 and 1963, all of which revolved around the issue of human freedom. In these dramas, characters are often imprisoned or isolated from the exterior world. They face a determined struggle for a better quality of life, though many ultimately accept and adapt to the situation of repression due to the fear of the unknown. Pedrolo used these techniques to mock the absurdity of the strict censorship that affected Franco's era, which isolated the country from the world and severely restricted and suppressed its freedom.