The Censors' Confusion: (Mis)Interpretations of the Works of Alfonso Sastre

Abstract

In a survey of theatre censorship in Spain carried out in 1974, Alfonso Sastre stated: 'No existo. He sido borrado de todas las listas... Salvo de las listas negras, por supuesto: por lo que se refiere a estas, estoy en todas. While by then he was percieved by the censors to be an enemy of the regime, it was not always so, as the documents held in the Archivo General de la Administracion in Alcala de Henares show. Alfonso Sastre was certainly more heavily censored than some during his writing career, but not always as much as some of his statements might lead one to believe.Yet there is no denying his position as one of the most committed dramatists in Francoist Spain; in fact that is why it is so surprising to discover that he percieved by some of the censors of his early realist works to be a friend of the regime. The confusion is all the more remarkable when one considers both the censorship legislation in operation at the time, and Sastre's public statements about theatre and society