• Overview
• Staging information
• Translations
• Sample translations
• Production history

Titles

English title: The Difficult Old Ladies
Date written: from 1961 to 1962
First publication date: 1963
First production date: 7 October 1966
Keywords: family, morality, morality > punishment, morality > honour, love, love > relationships, morality > crime, morality > judgement, power > intimidation, society > poverty
Genre and type: tragedy, absurdist

Title information

The full title of the play reads in English: The Difficult Old Ladies: Chaotic Tragedy Divided into a Prlogue and Two Parts

Pitch

After an innocent kiss, Antonio and Julita are on the run. Their behaviour has incurred the wrath of the ladies of The Association. These fine upstanding women will not stand for any immorality in their town, and they will pursue the offending couple to the very end.

Synopsis

Antonio and Julita have gone for a stroll in the park. They have been engaged for 37 years, since they were children. Now, at 47 years old, Julita feels as if the best years of her life are over. Antonio works in a factory, but this is not enough for Julita. She wants Antonio to get a promotion, to earn some proper money so that they can finally marry. To cheer Julita up, Antonio promises that they will get married the very next week. Carried away by the moment, they embrace each other and kiss. This kiss secures their fate for the rest of the play. It is an act outlawed by the ladies of The Association, who punitively enforce a fierce moral code on all townspeople. Unfortunately for Antonio and Julita, their kiss is seen by a Security Guard. Outraged, he immediately carts them off to prison.

Antonio’s wealthy aunts, Doña Joaquina and Doña Leonor, are members of The Association. As the more formidable of the two, Joaquina is appalled that her good name has been tainted by her nephew’s actions. Antonio and Julita have been behind bars for some time, and Joaquina hopes they will be struck down for their crime. However, Antonio and Julita were in fact married in prison, and have now been released. Joaquina and Leonor are visited by a number of ladies from The Association who have come in an official capacity. They ominously warn the sisters against having anything more to do with Antonio now that he has been released. This proves to be easier said than done, however, as Antonio unexpectedly turns up at the house with his new wife Julita. They are seeking refuge from the enraged townsfolk. But they will find no shelter under Joaquina’s roof, and she chases them off.

Julita suggests that they make their way to her sister Concha’s house. Concha lives in a cramped hovel with her husband Elias, her three grown-up children, her elderly mother-in-law and her young niece. As the family prepare for bed, Julita and Antonio turn up at the door. Antonio’s head is bandaged after he was attacked by an angry mob on the way there. Despite the already-overcrowded conditions, Concha allows her sister and Antonio to stay. But they are not the only ones seeking refuge. Don Theophanes also needs a place to stay. He is the former prison warden, dismissed from his job because he allowed the couple to marry. And so, the household of waifs and strays settles down for the night, cramped into just two rooms.

Several months pass. The Association’s anger over Antonio and Julita’s illicit kiss in the park has not cooled in the slightest. Ever since the couple arrived at Concha’s, The Association have had the house under surveillance. Antonio and Julita – who is now pregnant – cannot set foot outside for fear of being attacked. The mood in the cramped house is increasingly tense. Elias blames his wife’s charity towards Julita and Antonio for the household’s impoverished circumstances, abused by the townspeople and harassed by the ladies of The Association. To add to their problems, their unwed daughter Conchita announces that she is pregnant. Immediately, Elias envisages how news of this scandal will be received by the ladies of The Association. But his wife has a plan. They will tell The Association that Antonio raped Conchita, thus lifting the blame from the young girl. Julita is appalled at the proposed solution but Antonio is resigned to his fate, and agrees to the plan. And so, the family send for members of The Association to report the alleged crime.

The ladies of The Association, including Antonio’s aunts Joaquina and Leonor, arrive at the house. Joaquina carries a machine gun and is eager to punish Antonio for raping Conchita. Julita insists on Antonio’s innocence, and demands the right to love the man she married. Her cries do not fall entirely on deaf ears. Suddenly appalled by the authoritarian and aggressive behaviour of Joaquina, Leonor turns on her sister. Leonor, too, remembers a time when she loved a man, only to have to give him up to look after her elderly father. With no love and no children in her life, Leonor has given everything to The Association. Now, she turns to help her nephew. At gunpoint, she orders the shocked ladies of The Association to strip and disguises Antonio and Julita in their clothes so that they can escape. Leonor leaves with the couple, while Joaquina finds herself a new target for her anger. Poor Don Theophanes is now hunted down for his part in the whole affair. Terrified, he is dragged out to the street, where an angry mob attack and kill him.

Leonor takes Antonio and Julita to a house of ill repute where they can hopefully hide until the baby is born. The landlady, Doña Socorro, is surprised that the couple have not come for the same reason as everyone else does – including many good gentlemen and ladies of The Association – namely, to enjoy some illicit time alone together. Their stay is brief, however, as Joaquina soon discovers their hiding place and bursts in with an army of other elderly ladies. Trapped, Julita rails against the authority and hypocrisy of The Association. Doña Socorro, too, reminds Joaquina of her own former sexual turpitude. Doña Socorro’s attempt to reason with the old battleaxe proves fatal, however, as she is pursued out of the room and shot. In the end, Joaquina opens fire on the couple. Clutching one another, they fall down dead, together to the end. As far as The Association is concerned, their death has restored the moral order of the town. Victorious in their vengeance, Joaquina and her army leave, triumphantly singing a Nazi chorus.

Sources

The play is preceded by the following epigraph by The Brothers Karamzov: ‘I think that if the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness’ (Dostoevsky 1990: 239).

The Association and its preoccupation with moral standards has parallels with the situation in Spain under Franco.

• Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1990. The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Critical response

Fellow playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo was impressed by the play’s depiction of the aggressiveness of people often considered to be paragons of virtue and patience (Muñiz 1963: 69). He states that this play, along with others by Muñiz, is ‘even more free, more unbalanced, and more grand guiñolesque than Valle-Inclán’s esperpentos’ (Muñiz 1963: 68). However, César Oliva argues that the characters in Las viejas difíciles do not come from the esperpento tradition. Rather they are exaggerated because of the frustration of a playwright who wanted to tell a story in a particular way and was not free to do so because of censorship (Oliva 2004: 174).

César Oliva points out that, while the play may feel outdated now, it was written at a time when the kind of public act of affection that condemns the characters in the play was outlawed. At the time, then, this subject matter made the play rather affecting (Oliva 2004: 172).

• Muñiz, Carlos. 1963. El tintero. Un solo de saxofón. Las viejas difíciles. Madrid, Taurus (in Spanish)

• Oliva, César. 2004. ‘Difíciles viejas en difíciles tiempos (A propósito de Las viejas difíciles de Carlos Muñiz’. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra (1966-1970), vol. VI, eds. Víctor García Ruiz y Gregorio Torres Nebrera, pp. 169-75. Madrid, Fundamentos (in Spanish)

Further information

The play was subjected to a number of revisions, as Carlos Muñiz came up against the censors. Names of some characters were changed, and the ending of the play was altered.

In 1981 a television series based on the play aired on Spanish television.

Editions

• Muñiz, Carlos. 1963. El tintero. Un solo de saxofón. Las viejas difíciles. Madrid, Taurus

• Muñiz, Carlos. 2004. ‘Las viejas difíciles’. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra (1966-1970), vol. VI, eds. Víctor García Ruiz y Gregorio Torres Nebrera, pp. 177-247. Madrid, Fundamentos

Information about the editions

Useful readings and websites

• Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1990. The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• Oliva, César. 2004. ‘Difíciles viejas en difíciles tiempos (A propósito de Las viejas difíciles de Carlos Muñiz’. In Historia y antología del teatro español de posguerra (1966-1970), vol. VI, eds. Víctor García Ruiz y Gregorio Torres Nebrera, pp. 169-75. Madrid, Fundamentos (in Spanish)

Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 18 May 2011.

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