"La mejor reina de España": ¿propaganda o elegía?
ISSN: 1139-3637
Year of publication: 2012
Issue Title: Luis Rosales
Issue: 49
Type: Article
More publications in: Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios
Abstract
This paper analyses in context "La mejor reina de España", a play written by Luis Rosales and Luis Felipe Vivanco right at the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939). Although every circumstance aided and abetted the authors in the exploitation of the Nationalist myths of the New Spain, the play is remarkable for its lack of triumphalism and its tragic, non-heroic symbolism as keys to Spanish history. The main device in the text is the comparison of Queen Isabella to the Virgin Mary as "Mother of Sorrow". "La mejor reina de España" belongs no doubt to the propaganda apparatus set up by Falange Española; nevertheless it is the gloom that matters in the protrait of Isabella's kingdom rather than the glow.