Spanish Theater: Franco Era, Protest & Humor

Spanish Theater: Franco Era and Beyond

In the 1940s, the Spanish theatrical scene was dominated by a "national" theater in service of the dictatorship. The elusive theater, such as bourgeois comedy and humorous drama, triumphed. At the end of the 1940s, realistic protest theater emerged in 1949 with the premiere of Story of a Ladder by Buero Vallejo. This trend was later confirmed with the work Death Squad by Alfonso Sastre.

From the 1970s, a cutting-edge theater emerged with Fernando Arrabal and Francisco Nieva, influenced by the theater of the absurd and the theater of cruelty. Nor should we forget that in the late 1960s, independent theater emerged. From 1975, playwrights were attracted to contemporary issues.

Commercial or Evasive Theater

Postwar theater fulfilled two functions: to entertain and to convey a particular ideology. Within this, bourgeois comedy and humorous theater stand out.

Bourgeois Comedy

Bourgeois comedy aimed to entertain and educate the public through the praise of virtue. These were well-crafted works, with a moderate dose of criticism, some humor, and a melodramatic tone, which always presented an amiable solution to human conflicts. Love was an important theme. Notable authors include:

• Joaquín Calvo Sotelo with When Night Comes
• Luca de Tena with Two Women at 9

Theater of Humor

The theater of humor kept the Spanish populace away from the real and challenging issues the country was facing. It was a comic theater that was radically novel and innovative. The two most prominent representatives are Enrique Jardiel Poncela and Miguel Mihura.

The production of Enrique Jardiel Poncela is characterized by the incorporation of the improbable, with ingredients of madness and mystery. The characters typically belong to the bourgeoisie, and the master/servant dynamic frequently appears. They represent a society whose objectives are love and money. His two most important works are:

• Eloisa Is Beneath an Almond Tree
• Four Hearts with Brake and Reverse

In Eloisa Is Beneath an Almond Tree, Fernando and his fiancée Mariana, along with their families, are involved in the mysterious death of Eloisa, a woman who physically resembles Mariana. Four Hearts with Brake and Reverse features a group of characters who, as time goes on, instead of growing older, become younger.

Before Jardiel, Miguel Mihura was the true initiator of humorous restoration. He had written Three Top Hats in 1932, one of the most important works of contemporary Spanish theater, though it was not publicly performed until 20 years later. In this play, Dionisio, a serious and respectable man about to marry, confronts the free and bohemian world, falling in love with Paula, who belongs to this world. However, he ultimately renounces this freedom to marry his former girlfriend. Mihura thus shows disenchantment.

This pessimistic work attracted attention for its critical humor, a humor similar to that of the magazines founded by Mihura, such as La Codorniz and La Ametralladora, which were very popular during the Franco regime. Mihura continued cultivating humor with new titles, though with much less critical edge, such as The Great Lady and Maribel and the Strange Family.