Publications

A costureira d’aldea by Manuel Lugrís Freire is a one-act play in three scenes. The premise of the play is the attempt by Prácido, a town council clerk from Madrid, to win the affections of the local seamstress, Xaquina, who is, in turn, already romantically involved with Mingos. Although Xaquina makes light of Prácido’s overtures, she still uses him to prick Mingos’s jealousy and put his love to the test. The play ends with the wedding of Xaquina and Mingos.

Despite the conventional storyline of love games and laughter at the expense of a thwarted admirer, Lugrís Freire’s text is more fundamentally a defence of Galician identity based on the values and customs of traditional society and a celebration of the Galician language that lies at its core. The underlying ideological content of the play had an even more specific meaning and purpose in the context of its creation: to subvert the stock portrayal of Galician characters on the stages of Havana as objects of fun and ridicule.