The fountainovejunism to come…

What unites us most, what makes us a people, for example, our classical theater, in this case, Ovejuna Fountain, It can be written in four different ways: in the previous way and, in addition, Fuenteovejuna, Fuente Obejuna and Fuenteobejuna. We have never agreed on anything.

Only the people save the people has been a consensus phrase, but no one knows for sure who said it. Perhaps, for this reason, such unanimity has been possible. They have attributed it to Antonio Machado, who is buried outside Spain without anyone being able to save him except after the fact, leaving on his French tombstone bouquets of flowers held in his fist and remnants of an old flag that no one could save either. In the letter, where many claim to have read that quote from Machado, the poet wrote: “In Spain, the best is the people.” He didn’t say anything about saving himself. Skeptic to the core, like his Juan de Mairena (a character he kept alive throughout the war), Antonio Machado did not expect much salvation.

The phrase is beautiful, only the people save the people; but Machado was a great poet and he didn’t make sentences, he wrote poetry. It is another technique, another sensitivity. We pens make the sentences. Only the people save the people is a redundancy, a tautology. Thus, Alejandro Lerroux or Gabriel Rufián, who have similar oratory, spoke. The love of the people, in Antonio Machado, is in the helix of his DNA. Demophilia (a word composed of people and love) comes to the poet from his father, the folklorist Antonio Machado Álvarez, who signed much of his work with the pseudonym Demoófilo, including a famous anthology of flamenco songs. Antonio Machado was a demophile, son of Demophile, not a savior.

At the time when Antonio Machado wrote the aforementioned letter, others were the saviors. In fact, they are always the same. The scariest ones. Shortly after the war began, in October 1936, another great poet, Rafael Alberti, premiered his satirical farce in Madrid. The saviors of Spain. It was a tableau, for puppet puppets, where he had outlined a caricature mockery of the rebels. The characters were represented by a peasant, a bishop, a general, a German, an Italian, a Portuguese and a Moor (sic.). And the scene took place in an Andalusian square flanked, on one side, by a cathedral with a machine gun nest in the bell tower and, on the other side, by women in mantillas and shawls, and gentlemen in wide hats, all leaning out of the balconies. . As its title indicated, the piece was about the saviors of Spain.

There was a cultural war (then cultural wars were carried out by educated people), which consisted of recovering, saving, appropriating, all these words have some truth, of the classics of Spanish theater. The Falangists built their imagination with the mythical gold of that golden century. From Lope de Vega, Calderón…, they took a rhetoric, a lexicon and a certain iconography. Honor, religion, weapons, the integrity of the maiden, the people who love a king who is not there, who lives oblivious to what is happening, the rebellion of the leader of the people… All of that is in this theater , of course.

This is the case of “Fuente Ovejuna, all the people together!” The phrase comes out of Lope de Vega’s drama and forever becomes the people’s motto, a heartbroken cry; but, in reality, it masks a collective lynching. Here, the people are understood as a shapeless mass, as a blind force of nature, rather than as a civilized people. This is a people that needs to obey a just leader, to be governed, because if not they get out of control, even if it is with reason. This is the message that Falange finds in Lope de Vega, this was the reading they defended in their cultural war. Later, and in another country, the popular novel will maintain that collective democracy is not possible without the individual. This is seen when in The three musketeers, of Dumas, they shout in unison: “One for all and all for one!” It’s another way of sharing.

In that cultural war, against the ultranationalists and against national Catholicism, the intellectuals loyal to the Republic also wanted to make classical theater their own to return it to the people, as they considered it had belonged to them at the time when those works were premiered. The Pedagogical Missions, the Barraca de García Lorca, the representations of the Knight of Olmedothey had this purpose. The popular adjective of that so-called popular theater was that no town in Spain was left without seeing this theater, no matter how poor its people were, no matter how isolated the villages were in the most inaccessible mountains. Popular meant reaching everyone. Bringing culture to the towns was hard work. The actors, the school teachers, traveled in trucks and cars along goat paths until they reached the most remote villages, where they had never heard a symphony, nor seen a play, nor a movie, nor a painting.

Today, our access to culture does not go through those tortuous paths, but through great media. Reaching everyone is easier than ever, and yet it happens the other way around. Any attempt to bring the culture, lovingly cared for, preserved, offered, is discredited by a derogatory: this is of no one’s interest! In one fell swoop, culture is despised and the people are despised. It is enough to review television programming to get an idea of ​​what value is given to culture. And yet, on the screens they do not stop repeating: Only the people save the people. It is easier to save the people than to respect them.

Also during the civil war, in 1937, Rafael Alberti premiered his red version of the Numancia, of Cervantes. It was an act of political appropriation. Of cultural war. In its adaptation, the Numantine people continued to save themselves until they succumbed under the siege of the Romans. But, now, it was Mussolini’s Rome that surrounded the republicans of Celtiberia. That was Alberti’s message. Today, she is remembered more because her soccer club won the King’s Cup, and even played in the first division; but, for centuries, Numancia was a slogan, a hallmark, a nerve of the race, as Eugenio Noel would say. During the siege of the city of Zaragoza by Napoleonic troops, the famous siege of Zaragoza was performed on improvised stages. Numancia of Cervantes. The theater is always at the forefront. Even in times of war, theaters don’t close. In no country in the world.

Only the people serve the people, this is our true tragedy and our only epic. Saving yourself is another concept. Being saved is very Christian. Christ, salvator worldi, He is the great savior of humanity. A chosen one, a divine being, the saviors are always very suspicious, they have no references other than themselves, and that is why they invent quotes and create a bibliography at the expense of those who could not, nor let them, nor consented to them, who They will be saved.

To finish, I dare to mention what did exist. Here are these blows handed out by the peasant’s puppet, at the end of The saviors of Spain, Rafael Alberti’s piece for puppet theater:

Take, Bishop of Seville,

that you have already lost your chair.

Take it, Queipo de Llano,

for being a drunk and a pig.

Adolfo, your end has come,

become a potty.

Son of the great Benita,

drink this holy water.

And take this tomato

by Oliveira Sarasate.

To you, deceived young man,

I’ll give you the other side.

They have already finished their feat

the “Saviors of Spain”.

NOTE: Of course, it is discriminatory and prejudiced humor, which today has no right to complicity. We have learned something in 88 years. On the other hand, like all great poets, Rafael Alberti was prophetic. But we always see this later, when prophecies are no longer needed. Thank goodness the poetry remains. In this case, the poet’s shocking prediction is found in the last two verses. Just remove the “h” from feat.

#fountainovejunism #come..