Bernarda Alba – a warning from Spanish patriarchy and fascism

Frederico Garcia Lorca completed The House of Bernarda Alba, his final play, in June 1936. On 16 August, he was arrested by the fascists and, two days later, murdered by a firing squad. One of those thought responsible, a distant relative, boasted that he had fired “two bullets into his arse for being a queer”.

The play was banned in Spain until 1963. That was partly because of what it suggested politically, about the nature of dictatorships and the inevitability of their ultimate failure, but also because the behaviour and language of the characters was regarded as shockingly immoral in a country that was still a fascist dictatorship.

Indeed, it was not until 1978 that the Spanish constitution gave men and women equality under the law, effectively ending the Franco regime’s system of guardianship for single women. In Francoist Spain, motherhood was the very definition of womanhood.

It’s not difficult to see why the play was considered ‘problematic’ in Spain then, and this latest production, a new adaptation by Alice Birch at the National Theatre in London until early January, reveals once again not only its power, but also reminds us that it is still completely topical.

The titular character has just become a widow and has stated that her five daughters will observe a years-long period of official mourning for their father. The exception, we learn, is the oldest daughter, Angustias, who is 39 and already engaged to local village hunk, Pepe El Romano.

The trouble is, while she doesn’t love him, she knows it’s her way out of this household – but two of her sisters do hanker after him and the youngest, Adela, is already having an affair with him.

As Poncio, Bernarda’s maid, tells Adela brutally: be patient – at such an age, Angustias is likely to die in childbirth and then Pepe will be free to marry her. However, Adela isn’t prepared to wait and moves forward with her rebellion.

Here is a work that, on the cusp of the Spanish Civil War and the triumph of Spanish fascism, railed against the country’s deeply patriarchal society – a society where the Catholic church would link arms with a fascist regime to promote and enforce exactly such patriarchal views.

Never mind these women having sexual needs and desires, one ‘crime’ in the play is having a white fan rather than a mourning black one.

While it was written just before the civil war, Lorca foresaw dictatorship; Bernarda is a dictator in her own home. She is quite prepared to openly and physically torture one of her own daughters for stealing Angustias’s photo of Pepe – yet persists in saying it was a ‘joke’ and refusing to accept that the daughter in question is actually in love/lust with Pepe too.

So much of the power of this work comes from the fact that there is no male voice heard. Pepe El Romano appears, but only ever silently. This is women policing each other according to patriarchal rules. Sisters telling on sisters; servants fanning the flames. There is, of course, a storm – a reckoning – coming. Or is it? Will what happens really change Bernarda and how she rules her daughters with a rod of iron? Lorca – and Birch – leave that open, though only just.

But ours is a time when author Margaret Atwood finds herself frequently reminding people that The Handmaid’s Tale was “not a manual!”

US states are banning abortion and making contraception access much more difficult. In Iran, people (predominantly but not exclusively women) are being murdered by the state because they will not cover their heads for a ‘morality’ law. In Afghanistan, the Taliban closes beauty salons.

In the US and UK there’s a pearl-clutching obsession with trans women (it’s never trans men, note) and whether they are ‘real women’ and/or a danger to (real) ‘women and children’.

In the UK, we can see an increasing influence from those with similarly conservative religious and socially political positions.

For example, in May this year, British Conservative Party MP Miriam Cates, a religious fundamentalist herself, claimed that the UK’s low birth rate is the most pressing policy issue of the generation and is caused in part by “cultural Marxism” – a far-right, antisemitic dog whistle if ever you wanted one.

She was addressing the National Conservatism conference. It was in London – though run by a US-based right-wing thinktank. Ms Cates frequently speaks out against trans people, was a congregant of an evangelical church that has carried out conversion ‘therapy’ (she denies knowledge of this) and has linked with a charity, The Christian Institute, that wants Section 28 back and a higher age of consent for homosexuals.

She is far from alone. Add in the likes of Danny Kruger MP (Tory), Kemi Badenoch MP (Tory secretary of state for business and trade), Rosie Duffield MP (Labour), Joanna Cherry MP (SNP and a lesbian) and House of Commons Alba party leader Neale Hanvey MP – himself gay – and you get an idea of where we are. And they are not alone.

A short while ago, over on X/Twitter, I found this in my notifications.

Presumably, either my views on sexuality and gender render me ‘male’ or some people (or AI) think that my avatar cannot possibly reflect someone who was ‘assigned female at birth’. A year ago, at the theatre for my last birthday, I was challenged by a woman (I assume) as to whether I was in the right queue for the toilets.

In other words, I wasn’t ‘womaning’ enough.

This is men – and women – policing how women look and behave. This is men – and women – enforcing patriarchal views. As Bernarda Alba does. Remember that I said this production is timely?

But back to the production itself. The first half in particular is simply stunning theatre, as the female cast range around a series of rooms in a set that never represents a home, but suggests a prison/convent. All the bedrooms are hung with crucifixes. A rifle hangs in the living/dining room, suggesting the tragedy to come, and the walls are not solid, affording no privacy to any of the inmates. Merle Hensel’s set is a claustrophobic wonder.

Rebecca Frecknall’s direction is excellent. It requires the audience to concentrate so hard to see and understand all the individual stories going on, overlapping, all at the same time, yet offers huge rewards for doing so.

Pepe El Romano (James McHugh) never speaks, but his arsenal includes dance to suggest the erotic as his mere presence – albeit beyond the locked gates of the Alba household – stirs all the daughters imprisoned inside.

And then there is Harriet Walter (left, with Rosalind Eleanzar as Angustias), whose casting essentially made me book for this, on my birthday, after just becoming, myself, a widow.

She is superb as the eponymous Bernarda. Steely, hypocritical, vicious and without a shred of humanity as she rules her household. Utterly bound up in ‘respedctability’.

Of the daughters, particular mention to Imogen Mackie Walker, who had to step in to play Adela the night I saw it. She was excellent. Plaudits also go to Rosalind Eleanzar as Angustias, Eileen Nicholas, as Maria Josefa – Bernarda’s dotty old mother, who her daughter tries to keep imprisoned in her room – and Thusitha Jayasundra as Poncia.

This really is a stunning adaptation and production of an iconic play that, almost a century after it was penned, remains – tragically – absolutely one for our times.