Schedule for this month

Through manuscripts, books, letters, photographies of period and diverse documents, as well as a series of  personal objects that brings us to his iconography, this exhibit shows the importance of the works  and thoughts of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester in the Spanish culture of the 20th century. It reviews the life of the writer and focuses  on his prolific work, with special impact on the novels, the theatre and the essay, without forgetting his journalistic activity, his relation with the cinema or his dedication to teaching.

It is 1620, and the young King of Spain (Gabino Diego) is technically a married man, because the great churchmen have conducted a grand public wedding ceremony joining him with a wife. However, as the real rulers of the state, they have perversely kept him completely innocent in matters of sex, so that his marriage remains unconsummated. One day, one of the king's few friends sees to it that he gets to spend a little time with a high-class prostitute (Laura del Sol). In fact, she's so high class that she's the favorite whore for the Grand Inquisitor himself. After the king's initiation into the joys of the female body, he publicly declares his desire to see his queen naked, which scandalizes his prudish and very hypocritical court. The Inquisitor (Fernando Fernan Gomez), when he learns of the boy's meeting with the prostitute, issues two conflicting instructions to two different aides. He sends one to have her arrested and another to warn her to go into hiding. That kind of convoluted behavior is the norm in this humorous historical drama. One of the controversies the court entertains itself with is whether or not the king committed adultery with the prostitute, since it could be alleged that he wasn't quite completely married at the time, according to the legal and theological conventions of the time.

The cultural magazine Perro Berde, which is the only publication of Philippine culture in Spanish, presents its 3rd issue at the Instituto Cervantes in Manila. The magazine was initiated by a group of Filipino and Spanish writers residing in Manila. It presents, in the words of a member of the editorial board, “a venue for interaction among Filipino and Spanish and Latin American writers; an opportunity for a cultural exchange, which, in spite of the common history, has not been very significant in the last decades.” Sponsored chiefly by the Embassy of Spain in the Philippines and the AECID, Perro Berde is heir to a long tradition of Filipino publications in Spanish, which was the language employed in the first Filipino periodical, Aviso de noticias, in 1806. The name of the magazine is composed of a Spanish word (perro) and a vernacular present in various dialects of the Archipelago (berde, with Tagalog orthography, which does not have the letter V). With that title, aside from alluding to the rarity of current Filipino writings in Spanish, the publication intends “to transmit the cultural dialogue which supports the project.”

 A farm family moves into a city maybe at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They move in with the sister of the farmers wife. In the city everything is illegal or immoral or both. The family consists of a mother, a father (Manuel), a son (Pepe), a daughter (Tonia) and a younger son (Manolo). The sister has a daughter (Pili). In the city they encounter El Mellao, a gangster that wants to seduce Pili. He works for Don Roque (the Chamberlain) who runs everything. These two men are evil. The sister makes money by having Pili sell cigarettes illegally from a basket on the streets. The innocent and moral father tries this but is at the mercy of street kids with no money demanding sweets. He cant say no to them. The police intervene and take his basket because he has no license. Pepe goes to work for the Chamberlain, taking the job from El Mellao because he is cheaper, driving the Chamberlains Packard and then with others stealing potato sacks for the Chamberlain off of trucks laboring up a steep hill. Tonia starts out as a maid for the Chamberlains mistress, but he hears her singing, buys her clothes, including silk stockings, buys her singing lessons, arranges her stage debut where three men, paid for by the Chamberlain, interrupt her performance, giving the Chamberlain the moment he needs to comfort her and deflower her. Now he has now more use for her. The father and Pepe are very angry at the deflowering of Tonia, the father blames his wife for encouraging her, and Pepe demands that the Chamberlain marry Tonia. When the Chamberlain he ignores Pepe, Pepe attacks him only to lose. Manolo, the innocent younger son who is twenty, posing as chico, gets a job with a café carrying goods from one place to another. En route he is sidetracked by a puppet show and is robbed. He loses his job and is a disgrace. He leaves his aunts apartment. He hungry and lines up for food in a soup kitchen line run by the military behind a symbolic iron fence. However, a gang of boys steel the shirt he just washed, he chases after them, and now last in line finds there is no more food. He is ultimately befriended by the puppeteer and his attractive blond daughter. There he makes money. Meanwhile Pili wants more and more material things, wants to be a lady. So Pepe, having lost his job with the Chamberlain, sets out to rob potato sacks on a truck convoy by himself. But evil El Mellao hears of this, wants to hurt Pili, and warns the convoy. Pepe gets shot, returns to find Pili being hauled off as a conquest by El Mellao. Pepe is left for dead in the garage, the Chamberlain enters, Pepe pleads to the Chamberlain to save him, but the Chamberlain puts on gloves, hauls Pepe into the Packard, drives to a bridge, throws him onto the railroad tracks, where he is hit by a train. The film ends with the father picking up the earth from the graveyard and ordering his family back to the farm. The message of the film is that only on the land do you find the religious and male-centered values revered by Franco's Spain.