Theatre and/as Preservation: Rafael Alberti’s Noche de Guerra en el Museo del Prado (1956)

• Autores: Miguel Caballero Vázquez
• Localización: Bulletin of Contemporary Hispanic Studies, ISSN-e 2516-8037, ISSN 2516-8029, Vol. 1, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 155-170
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article proposes a contextual analysis of Rafael Alberti’s Noche de guerra en el Museo del Prado (1956). Set during the Spanish Civil War, the play culminates with the hanging of a Generalísimo. Taking into consideration Alberti’s Communist militancy, this article enquires into why he wrote a play that insisted on wartime rhetoric and proposed a violent overthrow of the dictator in 1956, the same year that the Communist Party of Spain disallowed these disruptive measures. The new strategy was to leave behind bellicose rhetoric and replace it with self-imposed tactical amnesia and the construction of a peaceful transition to a democratic regime. Instead, Alberti rejected the possibility of forgetting, and presented theatre and artistic heritage as pedagogical tools and rituals of collective memory. Noche de guerra contends that a conscious society cannot and must not be amnesic. Theatre and artistic heritage foster militant forms of remembrance.