Cigarreras Cándido Pazó

Based on Emilia Pardo Bazán’s La Tribuna, Cigarreras (The cigar makers) is a daring drama proposal directed and staged by Cándido Pazó and interpreted by Seven actresses. It combines the expected tone of an individual and collective drama with fresher and lighter touches, even comic at times, all of them so common in Pardo Bazán’s narrative.

The plot develops around the socially unacceptable relationship between a proletarian woman and a man from the bourgeoisie. Apart from that, this work can be read as a testimony of the political crisis from 1868 which resulted in the fall of the Bourbon dynasty in 1873 and the proclamation of the first Spanish Republic. It was a convulsed time full of confusion which still brings its echoes into current times. The protagonist’s pregnancy and birth of her bastard son are synchronized with the voices of the crowd in the streets crying up “Long life the First Republic!”