“1936”: Andrés Lima puts the Spanish Civil War on Stage

How to begin to approach a history of the Spanish Civil War for the stage? An ambitious prospect and one that Andrés Lima has set himself drawing on the team with whom he realised Shock 1. El cóndor y el puma (Shock 1. The condor and the puma) on the introduction of neoliberalism through military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina (2019)  and the later Shock 2. La tormenta y la guerra (Shock 2. The torment and the war) on the legacy of 9/11 (2021). The texts have been provided by Albert Boronat, Juan Cavestany, Juan Mayorga and Lima. Lima and Boronet have taken on dramaturgical responsibilities. Paul Preston, Verónica Serrada, Francisco Espinosa have collaborated with texts shaping the writing. Pilar’s Duaygües’ diaries as a teenager chronicling the personal effects of the war are also interwoven into the structure of the piece.

With a running time of over four hours and structured into three parts (with two intervals) this is an epic work in more ways than one. It moves from the beginning of the War on 17 July 1936 to its end on 1 April 1939 but there are digressions — as with a section at the commencement of Part 2 that covers the mobilisation of the right following the abdication of King Alfonso XIII in 1931 to begin preparations for what was to result in the coup that launched the Civil War.  The subtitle of 1936 is ¿El año en que España entró en shock? (The year in which Spain entered into shock?); this positions it in some way as the third instalment of a trilogy, beginning with Shock 1 and continuing with Shock 2, exploring Naomi Klein’s ideas of the shock doctrine across different historical eras: the exploitation of moments of crises and social disorientation to promote a ruthlessly free market agenda.

The piece begins with projections of the People’s Olympiad which should have taken place in July 1936. The fluttering posters projected onto two curtains stage left and stage right point to what might have been: had Spain been able to preserve the values of the Second Republic and host an alternative protest Olympiad to that held in Berlin earlier that summer. It’s an image of what was lost with a coup d’etat and the conflict that followed. Paco Ochoa’s Pau Casals conducting a concert, is again halted by the conflict — the voice of  General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano cutting through the music to introduce a new tone of menace onto the stage. What follows are the military machinations of Rebel Forces and the Republican leadership as the War was waged.

Lima’s cast of eight take on multiple roles in a show where the four tables which are deftly moved by the actors across the empty stage designed by Beatriz San Juan to create different scenic configurations — from a street in Barcelona to the Battle of the Ebro where so many teenage Republican recruits lost their lives. The focus is on theatricality and role play. Actors stand on the tables to deliver rousing speeches. Juan Vinuesa captures Francisco Franco’s monotone voice and rigid demeanour. His scene with his wayward father (realised by Antonio Durán Morris) rattles the outward appearance, dismissing him with the line “No estas capacitado para gobernar España” (You are not prepared to govern Spain): their tortured relationship is an indication of the past Franco sought to bury.

There is much of Ariane Mnouchkine’s 1789 (1970) and 1793 (1972) in the deployment of satire and popular entertainment. At one point the stage is converted into a cabaret act with Blanca Portilla’s chanteuse addressing the audience. This is also a piece about how history is told: the military leaders seeking to impose their version of the War while the diaries of Pilar Duayguës reveal the fear and confusion of an adolescent trying to make sense of a conflict bringing chaos to the country.

The production is in many ways a Lehrstück with a clear didactic purpose. In a country where only in 2022 did the Law of Democratic Memory insist on a new approach to teaching the Civil War, the legacy of a narrative that has refused to recognise the illegitimacy of the coup remains pervasive. 1936 offers a direct challenge to official histories that have seen both sides as equally culpable. The action moves at a breathtaking pace with Miquel Àngel Raió’s video projections on the sinewy while curtains reminding us of both our presence in a theatre and of the footage and photographs that historians have drawn on in constructing histories of the Civil War. Dates are projected to help orientate the spectator as politicians pontificate, standing on the tables to mobilise the populace, spread hate, and try and shape military strategy.

Guillermo Toledo’s General Juan Yagüe spits his words out as he stops across the stage. He provides a veritable contrast to the fluid movements of María Morales’s feminist Clara Campoamor — 1936 doesn’t shy from showing the challenges women faced in 1930s Spain. At times, narratives openly contradict each other – Durán Morris’s Queipo de Llano counterposed with Alba Flores’ characterisation of communist icon La Pasionaria.

The production’s inspirational strength is to have Madrid’s Youth Chorus as a core part of the action. They function both as a chorus in the classical sense of the word, representing the people who are seen as collateral by the military leaders, but they are also a new generation learning about the Civil War. They represent the future that can now be forged. They accompany La Pasionaria in defiantly singing “No pasaran” (They Will Not Pass). They sing in harmony as the leaders of the Church mobilise to  support the right.

Lima has crafted a musical (with music by Jaume Manresa) but one which also engages with the ways in which the War was narrated by writers — George Orwell is a character in the piece, an awkward, earnest Englishman played by Paco Ochoa — and musicians. The Clash’s Spanish Guns rings out in the auditorium, as the Chorus dance across the stage. As bombs fall on Almeria, the Chorus create a percussive rhythm to capture the panic of the fleeing refugees. The lyrics of the rousing Republican hymn ¡Ay Carmela! echo through the auditorium as a new generation appropriate its message. The many contributions of the Madrid’s Youth Chorus lift this into a piece that feels urgent and timely.

Characters come back from the dead as with Paco Ochoa’s José Calvo Sotelo, speaking from the afterlife after his 1936 assassination. “España es muy tonta, odia su propia grandeza” (Spain is very silly. It hates is own grandeur), he states. Blanca Portillo’s characterisation of the leader of the Falange José Antonio Primo de Rivera is gloriously expressionistic – it is as if she has stepped out of an early 1930s horror flick.

María Morales’s Azaña (the Republic’s President) speaks but fails to inspire, it is almost as if the politicians are talking to themselves or to radio. Rhetoric rules and the power of irresponsible rhetoric in winning minds is very well handled in the production.

1936 presents no simplistic binary approach that reads the left as idealists and the right as malevolent villains. The left’s failings in leadership and military strategy are all too clear.  Their troops are left with inadequate weapons. The Battle of the Ebro sees the young Republican combatants fall dead in a choreographed movement pattern that speaks of losses and more losses. Marcos Morau collaborated with the chorus on their excellent movement work.

The wigs and costume changes — some realised on stage as clerics remove their robes to become peasants or remove wigs and hats to shake off a character — create the sense of quick fire action, of shifts and changes, of a stage in flux where nothing stays still. This reinforces the sense of panic, of speed, and danger. When the action slows, as with the deliberation of a series of industrialists and aristocrats plotting el movimiento (the movement) to bring down the Republic, it offers a space for understanding that the coup d’etat was part of a broader alignment of the right who were able to amass a war chest of €336m (in today’s equivalent) to aid their cause.

Brechtian dramaturgy comes to the fore as Carmen (now in the militia) disagrees with her former neighbour Jorge. In a latter scene, Bilbao is both a city under siege but also a vaudeville performer who dances around the leaders of the Rebel forces  plotting the city’s demise. Here Pedro Yagüe’s lighting comes into its own creating pockets of action. The production often isolates areas across a broader stage canvas – pointing to sectarianism, suspicion and a failed collective cause.

The final act (Part 3) focuses on resonances with the present — the digging testifying to the 114,000 corpses that lie in unmarked mass graves across the country, graves of Republicans killed in extra-judicial executions. Guillermo Toledo picks out a skull from the undulating ground covered by a giant Republican flag. Bodies emerge from beneath the flag, families hug. A degree of closure, perhaps.

There is much to admire in 1936: the busy dramaturgy, the constant flow of images from the Civil War and the propaganda of its different sides projected onto the giant curtains, the stories of different generations, the recognition of rhetoric’s dangers in the speeches of the politicians, the varied performance styles from camp to agit prop. There is plenty of  rough and tumble, and an understanding that history is messy and chaotic here. 1936 shows how theatre can reflect and give form to that chaos. It also recognises how the Civil War still shapes present-day Spain, and in so doing provides an invigorating evening of theatre.

1936 runs at the Teatro Valle-Inclán until 26 January 2025. Then touring to Teatro Arriaga, Bilbao (31 January and 1 February); Teatro Central, Sevilla (7-8 February); Teatro Cuyás, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (14-15 February); Teatro Gayarre, Pamplona (1-2 March); Teatro Bretón, Logroño (15 March); Teatro Rosalía de Castro, A Coruña (28-29 March); Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela (5 April); Teatro Félix Petite, Vitoria Gasteiz (12-13 April)