From littérature engagée to engaged translation: staging Jean-Paul Sartre's theatre as a challenge to Franco's rule in Spain

ABSTRACT

The practice of creating translations that ‘rouse, inspire, witness, mobilize, and incite to rebellion’ is described by Maria Tymoczko, following Jean-Paul Sartre's littérature engagée, as ‘engaged translation’. In Spain, under the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975), the theatre became a site of opposition to his rule and the creation of ‘engaged’ translations of foreign plays was one of the ways in which alternative social and political realities were transmitted to local audiences. This was particularly evident during the so-called apertura period (1962–1969), when Spain's political leaders embraced more liberal and outward-facing cultural policies as part of their efforts to ensure the regime's continuity. Drawing on archival evidence from the state censorship files held at Archivo General de la Administración (AGA) in Alcalá de Henares, this article considers how ‘engaged’ translations of Sartre's theatre were employed as instruments of cultural opposition to the Spanish dictatorship. It also argues that an analysis of the files both helps us to understand the role of censorship in shaping an official version of the past, and shines a light on the memory of a little-studied aspect of cultural activism in the Spanish theatre.

KEYWORDS:

• Theatre censorship
• translation and censorship
• Spain under Franco
• Jean- Paul Sartre
• engaged translation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Catherine O’Leary is Professor of Spanish at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Her research focuses on contemporary Spanish theatre, censorship, gender, and cultural memory and some of these strands come together in her studies of theatre translation under the Franco dictatorship. She has published widely on contemporary Spanish theatre and her works include a monographical study of the theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo (Tamesis, 2005) and articles on Fernando Arrabal (JILAR, 2008), Antonio Buero Vallejo (Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2011), Carlota O’Neill (Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 2012) and the Nosotros Theatre Group (MLR, 2017). Other publications include A Companion to Carmen Martín Gaite (with Alison Ribeiro de Menezes; Tamesis, 2008; pb 2014), Legacies of War and Dictatorship in Contemporary Spain and Portugal (co-edited with Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, Peter Lang, 2011), and Global Insights on Theatre Censorship (co-edited with Diego Santos Sánchez and Michael Thompson, Routledge, 2015). The latter is one of the outputs of the AHRC-funded project Theatre Censorship in Spain: 1931–1985 (http://www.dur.ac.uk/mlac/tcs/).

Notes

1 The censorship files consulted are held at the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (MECD), Archivo General de la Administración (AGA), Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). They are from the theatre censorship documents within the Culture Section, IDD [phone]. All further references to censorship materials are from this archive and are listed by folder (SIG) and file number.

2 For further information about theatre censorship in Spain, see (Abellán, 1980; Muñoz Cáliz, 2005; O’Connor, 1966; O’Leary, 2005). For information on the censorship of foreign dramatists in particular, see Merino-Álvarez’s TRACE project (www.ehu.es/trace) and Vandaele (2010).

3 See Orden 15 julio 1939 and Orden 9 febrero 1963, applied to the theatre the following year by the Orden 6 febrero 1964 (MIT), por la que se aprueba el Reglamento de Régimen Interior de la Junta de Censura de Obras Teatrales y las normas de censura. In fact, there was another layer to theatre censorship – the control of publications – which was regulated by different legislation, the 1938 Press Law and its replacement in the apertura period, the 1966 Press Law. For an overview of theatre censorship in Spain in the period, see Abellán (1980) and Thompson (2012).

4 SIG 73/9689. File 409/68. The translations from the censorship files are mine throughout.

5 On Huis clos in 1964, SIG 73/9489 File 250/64; and again in 1967, SIG 73/9593 File 125/67.

6 SIG 73/9689. File 409/68.

7 SIG 73/9602. File 189/67.

8 Various applications from student groups to stage Morts sans sépulture (Muertos sin sepultura) in the late 1960s and 1970s, for example, were approved with audience restrictions (See SIG 73/9596. File 150/67). Later, in 1973, applications came from La ratonera (Granada) La putain (La mujerzuela respectuosa), SIG 73/10020 File 180/73; and from student residence Colegio Mayor Navacerrada (Madrid) Les mouches (Las moscas), SIG 73/10017 File 143/73.

9 For more on the importance of student theatre in the opposition to the regime, see Castilla (1999).

10 El teatro independiente en España 1962–1980. http://teatro-independiente.mcu.es/index.php. See also Fernández Torres (1987).

11 SIG 73/9538. File 108/66.

12 SIG 73/9576. File 5/67; SIG 73/9934. File 213/72.

13 Alfonso Sastre and José María del Quinto had a long association which included the Grupo de Teatro Realista (GTR) in 1960, one of whose goals was the ‘liquidation’ of censorship (Martínez Michel, p. 58). In the obituary published in El país on 26 September 2005, Eduardo Haro Tecglen described Del Quinto as ‘un revolucionario del teatro’. Online. https://elpais.com/diario/2005/09/26/agenda/1127685607_850215.html Marsillach was involved in some of the most scandalous and successful theatre productions of the dictatorship, including a production of Peter Weiss's Marat-Sade in 1968 (in fact Sastre was responsible for that adaptation also). Espert was one of Spain's most successful actresses and leveraged her influence to stage social and political works by dramatists such as Brecht.

14 Both in SIG 73/9489 File 250/64.

15 SIG 73/9489 File 250/64.

16 SIG 73/9593 File 125/67; a new file is opened because of the new version: SIG 73/10058; File 562/73.

17 The first edition was published there in 1948, and a second edition, the one used here, came out in 1950 (Sartre, 1950).

18 SIG 73/9538. File 108/66. De Asturias’s 1946 novel, El Señor Presidente, is a denunciation of dictatorship.

19 On Pedrolo, see Pijuan Vallverdú (2005) and Godayol (2018), and the censorship of his work, see http://www.fundaciopedrolo.cat/?seccio=ped-Censura.

20 Les mosques SIG 73/9627. File 365/67 – the application is dated December 1967; A porta tancada SIG 73/9709 File 148–69; La p … respectuosa SIG 73/9705. File 111/69.

21 SIG 73/9934. File 213/72. During the transition period, his version of Morts sin sepultura was staged in 1976 (SIG 73/10190. File 1341/76).

22 SIG 73/9576. File 5/67.

23 SIG 73/9638. File 47/68. The published translation referred to in the application was completed in 1951.

24 For further analyses of Sastre's social and political theatre, see (De Paco 1993; Forest 1997; Gies 1975; Pasquariello 1965-66); and Sastre's own essays, Drama y sociedad (1956); Anatomía del realismo (1965); and La revolución y la crítica de la cultura (1970).

25 SIG 73/9593. File 125/67.

26 SIG 73/9602. File 189/67.

27 SIG 73/9602. File 189/67; SIG 73/9593 File 125/67.

28 SIG 73/9627. File 363/67.

29 It is not specified in the file but is likely to refer to the defenestration of Communist leader, Julián Grimau during interrogation following his arrest in 1962 by the political police force, the Brigada Político Social. He did not die and was executed by the regime in 1963. Indeed, Sartre condemned the killing in an article called ‘Grimau’, published in Libération on 27–28 April 1963, a week after the execution (see Contat & Rybalka, 1974, p. 434).

30 SIG 73/9641. File 76/68.

31 SIG 73/9641. File 76/68.

32 SIG 73/9689. File 409/68.

33 SIG 73/9751. File 468/69.

34 Indeed Sastre's own play, En la red (1960), perhaps inspired by Sartre, depicts a group of freedom fighters struggling to liberate Algeria.

35 SIG 73/9751 File 468/6.

36 SIG. 73/9627 File 363/67.

37 SIG 73/9796. File 357/70.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under Grant AH/E007686/1.