I Copyright by Elena García-Martín 2004
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Copyright by Elena García-Martín 2004 i The Dissertation Committee for Elena García-Martín Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Negotiating Golden Age Tradition since the Spanish Second Republic: Performing National, Political and Social Identities Committee: Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Supervisor Vance Holloway, Co-Supervisor Michael Harney Guy Raffa Margaret R.Greer ii Negotiating Golden Age Tradition since the Spanish Second Republic: Performing National, Political and Social Identities by Elena García-Martín, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2004 iii Dedication A, Por y Para John, sin el que no sería ni estaría. A mis padres y hermanos tan cerca en la distancia. Con mis amigos, esos que se colaron tan adentro. iv Acknowledgement I would like to thank the Program of Comparative literature and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for their intellectual and material support; Ryan Fisher, Kevin Carney and Laura Rodríguez for meeting every one of our crisis with a smile; Phillip Sipiora for betting for me every time; the peoples of Fuente Obejuna, Zalamea and Garray—residents, directors and actors—for their warmth, generosity and willingness to share their passion; and, specially, Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Vance Holloway, Michael Harney, Guy Raffa and Margaret R. Greer for their guidance, patience and kindness. Thank y’all for making learning both a pleasure and a challenge. v Negotiating Golden Age Tradition since the Spanish Second Republic: Performing National, Political and Social Identities Publication No._____________ Elena García-Martín, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2004 Supervisors: Elizabeth Richmond-Garza and Vance Holloway Traditionally, the study of Golden Age drama has been restricted to regarding the plays either thematically or historically, disregarding their impact upon the present. However, once on stage, these documents from the past become active constituents of a national heritage upon which the present of a contemporary society is projected. I propose Golden Age drama as an ideal vantage point from which we may discern the tensions, struggles and desires of modern Spain. Considering the Spanish Civil War as the most decisive point in the history of contemporary Spain, I focus, first, on the frequency with which selected historical plays of Lope de Vega, Cervantes and Calderón were re- enacted as ideological banners by both factions in the conflict. The pervasive vi presence of Golden Age drama in the education, theaters and press of Republican and early Francoist Spain prompts the questioning of the role of cultural tradition as a political tool around the time of the Civil War. This approach will allow for the treatment of dramatic heritage in all its fluidity and complexity by dealing with history, not as a fixed residue, but as an artifact that may be controlled through means of cultural production, as a process that needs to be continually renewed, and as a performance where claims about tradition, culture and national identity are invariably contested. I have selected plays that focus on, and are performed by actual Spanish communities—Fuenteovejuna, Numancia, and El Alcalde de Zalamea—so as to reveal some of the dynamics between time/place, nation/community and elite/masses at work in particular interpretive moments of the Spanish tradition. This dissertation examines these plays as they have been variously represented by, the Republicans as revolutionary icons, by the Francoists as emblems of conservative nationalism, and by contemporary rural communities as episodes of local, actualized history. The contrast between these various versions of heritage yields valuable insights into the role of cultural tradition as a political, sociological and ideological tool. vii Table of Contents Introduction. Negotiating Golden Age Tradition since the Second Spanish Republic: Performing Consent/Dissent........................................................1 CHANGING DESIRES TOWARDS THE PAST: History as a Process and the Recovery of Collective Agency ..............................................6 Models of Public Desire ............................................................................10 TEXTUALIZING, FICTIONALIZING, RUPTURING THE PAST. Re- writing [National] Identity ................................................................12 PERFORMING HISTORY, RITUALIZING TRADITION. The Aesthetics of Individuality ................................................................16 Plays attached to History and Place. ..........................................................19 Chapter I. Political Investments in the Cultural Properties of Republican and Francoist Spain. Tales of Origin and Identity............................................24 HISTORICAL RE-CONTEXTUALIZATIONS........................................26 TRANSCENDING/TRANSFORMING HISTORY...................................28 INVESTING IN CULTURE AS POLITICIZED HERITAGE...................37 CLASSICS FOR ALL, FROM ALL..........................................................44 CLASSICAL THEATRE AS POPULAR CULTURE ...............................48 Chapter II. Sheep or Bees? The Dominant and Subaltern Fuenteovejuna..........58 Rhetorical Constructions of Fuenteovejuna in the 30’s and 40’s................81 Fuenteovejuna, in Fuente Obejuna, by Fuente Obejuna. ..........................109 Chapter III. A Dissident Alcalde de Zalamea? Outlining Political Agency in Popular Identity Politics. .........................................................................119 High Discourses on El Alcalde de Zalamea .............................................119 Perspectives during the Dictatorships ......................................................135 El Alcalde, in Zalamea by Zalamea .........................................................149 El Alcalde de Zalamea: Beyond Fiction and Reality ................................176 viii Chapter IV. Numancia: National Myths, Mythical Stones or The Power of Sacrificial History. ..................................................................................184 Historical and literary stories of Numancia..............................................188 c) CONSTRUCTIONS OF NUMANCIA IN THE XXTH CENTURY: MOLDING THE MYTH................................................................197 THE NUMANCIA OF REBELS AND LOYALISTS..............................203 Cervantes’ NUMANCIA seen TODAY ....................................................250 CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................271 WORKS CITED..................................................................................................284 VITA ..............................................................................................................293 ix Introduction. Negotiating Golden Age Tradition since the Second Spanish Republic: Performing Consent/Dissent. This study will attempt to map out the difficult place where theatre, tradition and national identity intersect. The pervasive presence of Golden Age drama in the education, theatres and press of Republican and early Francoist Spain prompts a questioning of the role of cultural tradition as a political tool since the Civil War. Since the present is often performed through the re-writing of the past, the multiple historical and ideological perspectives manifest through this dramatic tradition are the key to exploring some of the official claims, myths and desires inherent in the discourses that attempted to fix and define the national factions of the Civil War that still constitute, in the popular mind, the right and left of today. This study departs from a temporal approach that conflates two disturbing eras in Spanish history—Imperial Golden Age and Civil War—only to arrive at a spatial vision that elucidates a specific mode of contemporary local historical understanding. The Civil War and Imperial periods include often silenced contestatory ideas and discourses against which hegemonic martial discourses defined themselves. The shift from the temporal to the spatial coordinates of history illustrates the mechanisms by which strategies of historical representation have contributed to shape the collective memory, and, more importantly, the virtually invisible participation of popular peripheral communities in the historical discourse. 1 In the 1930’s both the right and the left believed in the formative value of history. But, if the left considered that only a positivist approach to history could liberate Spaniards from backwards myths and habits, the right believed that a vitalist return to the historical past was the means to validate the essential truths and values of the Spanish nation. In contrast to these perspectives, modern local approaches to history disregard the centrality of time to concentrate instead on the continuity of historical space and the immediate physical and biographical connection of the people with their geographic environment as a mode of historical cognition. Departing from the premise that history as well as tradition are categories of thought rather than inalterable residues from the past, I would suggest the need to resist the rigidity generally imposed upon those designations by exclusivist viewpoints and the urgency of broadening the parameters of