Antonio Buero Vallejo was a Spanish playwright, who is considered to be the best play writer of the 20th century. His plays, especially "Historia de Una Escalera" continue to be represented in theatres all over the world, and even some schools stage his plays. Vallejo's works criticized the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco, which ruled Spain for most of his life.
Background
Antonio Buero Vallejo was born on September 29, 1916, Guadalajara, Spain. His father, Francisco Buero, captain of the Army, taught calculation in the Military Academy of Engineers. Vallejo spent his childhood in La Alcarria except for a couple of years (1927-1928) when the family moved to Larache (Morocco). He became an avid reader in his father's extensive library, and he also liked music and painting: he drew incessantly from age 4. His father often took him to the theatre and when he was 9 he started directing his own plays in a miniature theatre.
Education
Vallejo's father and a private teacher will be responsible for his education until 1926, the year in which he enters the Secondary School of his hometown to begin high school studies, which will end in 1933. Vallejo became interested in philosophy, science, and social studies. In 1934 the family moved to Madrid, where Buero Vallejo enrolled in the "Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando", following the impulse of his early vocation for drawing, where he alternated between assisting to his classes, attending theatre and reading.
When the Civil War broke out in 1936, Vallejo tried to enlist voluntarily to fight on the front, but when he did not get his father's permission, he gave up. A few months after the beginning of the war, his father was arrested and shot for his alleged adherence to the uprising of General Franco. Although the death of his father was a deep trauma on a personal level, Buero remained faithful to his political ideology, supporting the Republic from the first moments of the conflict.
In 1937 Vallejo joined the Communist Party. During the war, he was a part of an infantry battalion assigned to the Fifth Division with which he fought on the Jarama front and the Aragón front. He also collaborated in various cultural activities., wrote and published his drawings in the republican publication La Voz de la Sanidad.
When the war ended, he was stationed at the Health Headquarters of Valencia. There he was arrested and detained in a concentration camp for a month. Subsequently, he was authorized to return home with the condition of regularly presenting himself to the new authorities, a condition that Vallejo will never fulfill.
Vallejo, who participated in the reorganization of the Communist Party in hiding, was again arrested in June 1939. After a summary trial, he was sentenced to death for his "adherence to the rebellion." After eight months, capital punishment was commuted to thirty years in prison. He was held in various prisons, such as the Madrid prison of Conde de Toreno, where he coincided with Miguel Hernández and where he drew the famous portrait of the poet. Later he was transferred to Yeserías, also in Madrid, and, later, to El Dueso (Cantabria) and Santa Rita (Madrid).
In March 1946, after several reductions of the sentence, Vallejo left the penitentiary of Ocaña (Toledo), his last prison stay, and obtained the conditional freedom. In that year he wrote, once abandoned the painting, his first play, In The Burning Darkness, which will not be released until 1950.
Between 1947 and 1948 Vallejo wrote Historia de una Escalera, for which he won the Lope de Vega Prize in 1949. Considered one of the most important works of contemporary Spanish theater, it was a revulsive of the Spanish scene to show the social reality of the postwar period. It premiered on October 14, 1949, at the Teatro Español in Madrid.
In later years, there were other premieres in various theaters in Madrid, such as La Tejedora de Sueños (1952), La señal Que se Espera (1952), Casi un Cuento de Hadas (1953), Madrugada (1953) and Irene o el Tesoro (1954).
In 1954 censorship prohibited the representation of Aventura en lo Gris. Vallejo responded with an article Don Homobono, published in the newspaper the following year. In 1956 he presented Hoy es Fiesta, a work for which he won his first National Theater Award and the Maria Rolland Prize. In 1957 he wrote Las Cartas Boca Abajo and, in 1958, his first historical drama, Un soñador para un Pueblo, about the Marquis of Esquilache and his frustrated attempts to modernize Spanish society. His essay La Tragedia was also published.
In 1960 Vallejo published Las Meninas, one of his most successful public works. In 1962 he wrote another of his key works, El Concierto de San Ovidio, in which he represented, through blindness as a metaphor, the inability of society to rebel against an oppressive reality.
In 1963 Vallejo released the final version of Aventura en lo Gris. Once again, his political commitment lead him to be silenced by Franco's censorship. In 1964 censorship again prevented him from publishing La Doble Historia del Doctor Valmy. Released in the United Kingdom in 1968, it will not be released or published in Spain until 1976. In 1966, he traveled to the United States to give a series of lectures on theater in several American universities. In 1967 he returns to Madrid stages with the premiere of El Tragaluz. In 1970 he presented El Sueño de la Razón, one of his most widely known works abroad.
Proposed by Vicente Aleixandre, Emilio García Gómez, and Pedro Laín Entralgo, on January 28, 1971, Vallejo was elected a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. In that same year, he premiered Llegada de Los Dioses and participated in the World Congress of the Society of Authors in Monte Carlo (France).
In 1974 Vallejo premiered La Fundación. In 1977 he published La detonación. He participated in the IV World Session of the Theater of Nations in Caracas In 1978 he attended the New York annual convention of the Modern Language Association as a lecturer. In 1979 he premiered Jueces en la Noche. He gave a lecture at the University of Tübingen (Germany) during the seminar devoted to his work. In 1980 he won, for the fourth time, the National Theater Award. He also lectured at the universities of Freiburg (Germany) and Geneva (Switzerland).
In 1981 Caimán was published. Vallejo traveled to the Soviet Union to participate in the Congress of the Union of Writers. In 1984 he premiered Diálogo Secreto in San Sebastián.
In December 1986, Vallejo received the Cervantes Prize, which was granted to a dramatist for the first time. In March 1987 he received the Gold Medal of Guadalajara. In 1989 he premiered Música Cercana. In 1991 he published his first book of poems, Tentativas poeticas, composed of twenty-six poems written between 1949 and 1991. In 1993 he publishes Libro de Estampas, which contained his unpublished texts and drawings.
In 1994 Vallejo presented in Las Trampas del Azar. In 1996 he obtained the National Prize for Literature for his work. In 1999, he premiered his last work at the Teatro Español, Misión al Pueblo Desierto. Its premiere was made to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Vallejo's theatrical debut.
During his career, Vallejo won three National Theater Prizes (in 1957, 1958 and 1959), a National Theater Prize for all his career in 1980, the National Literature Prize in 1996, and the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Spain's highest literary honor, in 1986. From 1971 until his death he was a member of the Real Academia Española.
While other authors left Spain to escape Franco's censorship, Vallejo stayed in Spain and used symbolism to criticize the government. He did not follow but participated in the reconstruction of the Partido Comunista de España (Communist Party of Spain), which he had joined during the civil war.
Views
Vallejo symbolized the limitations of human beings by adding flaws to his characters. It symbolizes imperfections and the absence of freedom to understand ourselves and our point in life. Men aren't free because they can't understand the mysteries surrounding them.
Vallejo's plays analyze the Spanish society, with all its injustices, lies and violence. It's seen in plays like Historia de una escalera, which is one of the most important plays of its time, because of the impact it caused for its realism and social content. In El tragaluz, Buero Vallejo subtly denounces the problems with the dictatorship and its obsession with influencing the people's vision of history and future events.
The works of Vallejo stand out thanks to his ability to create interesting and appealing characters, which are normally characterized by having physical or mental flaws, with complex personalities that evolve with the play. Characters are never reduced to symbols, and they've been divided into active and contemplative characters by the critics. The first ones lack scruples and their actions are always caused by their own selfishness; they don't doubt in being cruel or violent if it serves them. On the other hand, contemplative characters are those that feel anguish because the world they live in is too small. They move in a universe without hope, and dream about the impossible even though they know they're destined to failure and will never see their wishes come true.
Quotations:
"We live in a civilized world that still seems the most intoxicating sport the very old practice of killing. They slaughter you for fighting the established injustice, for belonging to a detested race; they end up with you because of hunger, if you are a prisoner of war, or if you are shot for alleged attempts at uprising; they condemn you secret courts for the crime of resisting in your own invaded nation."
Membership
From 1971 until his death, Vallejo was a member of the Real Academia Española. Vallejo was also a member of the Hispanic Society of America, a member of the Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies and the Modern Language Association of America. He was also an honorary member of the Deutscher Hispanistenverband, and a member of the International Committee of the Theater of Nations.
Real Academia Española
1971 - 2000
Hispanic Society of America
Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies
Modern Language Association of America
International Committee of the Theater of Nations
Interests
Writers
Bertolt Brecht, Arthur Miller
Connections
In 1959 Vallejo married the actress Victoria Rodríguez with whom he had two children: Carlos and Enrique.
