LOS PAZOS DE ULLOA

On the centenary of the death of Emilia Pardo Bazán, Secuencia 3 presents the theatrical adaptation of Los Pazos de Ulloa, in a version by Eduardo Galán and directed by Helena Pimenta.

Doña Emilia, a woman ahead of her times, reveals human and social miseries and contradictions with absolute realism. This play offers a plea against violence and cruelty, focusing on the confrontation between desire, passion, love and the rural violence of the despotic world and the politeness and good manners of the city (Santiago de Compostela).

The latent feminism in Los Pazos de Ulloa stems from Emilia Pardo Bazán’s own life: the first woman university professor in Spain, the first woman member of the Ateneo de Madrid and of the SGAE, founder of magazines, novelist, follower of the naturalist novel, precedent of the language of Valle Inclán; playwright, essayist, cultural and political chronicler for the press at that time in Madrid. She was also a candidate for academician of the RAE, but was not elected because she was a woman.

To her limitless activity must be added an exciting and contradictory personality, which is also reflected in Los Pazos de Ulloa. Doña Emilia was a feminist but also a conservative (even defending Carlism), a Catholic and at the same time passionate about sex outside marriage, a follower of the freedom of Catholicism and at the same time a follower of deterministic naturalism due to biological inheritance and social experiences. But what is life if not a contradiction between existence and the absence of existence?