«La crisis de los titiriteros»: censura e metaficção no teatro espanhol contemporâneo

Abstract

In February 2016, during the carnival celebrations in Madrid, the play "La bruja y don Cristóbal," performed by the Granada-based company Títeres desde Abajo, had its performance interrupted by local and national police after spectators reported that the show glorified terrorism by using a banner with slogans in support of Al Qaeda and ETA. The incident, treated as a matter of national security, resulted in the arrest of the artists and sparked a public debate that seldom includes theater as one of its protagonists, as seen in newspapers like El País or ABC. This article, based on a comparison of the reports published by the two main Spanish newspapers during the five days the puppeteers were in jail, aims to reflect on the discursive strategies used in the analyzed journalistic texts to observe some of the metafiction devices employed in this public debate. Lastly, the article suggests contemplating some of the themes that led to the incident surrounding the theatrical work: the social place of puppet theater, often associated with subversion and the historical construction of taboos related to the concepts of crisis and national identity.