SOURCE: Casa, Frank P. “The Problem of National Reconciliation in Buero Vallejo's El Tragaluz.” Revista Hispánica Moderna XXXV, no. 3 (April 1969): 285-94.

In the following essay, Casa analyzes the sociopolitical significance of El tragaluz, contending that it was the first Spanish play to explore the moral consequences of the Spanish Civil War.

Buero Vallejo's El tragaluz is one of the most important works of Spanish post-war literature. That its importance is due to political-cultural circumstances rather than to its literary merit does not, in any way, diminish the significance of the play.¹ The peculiar distinction of the drama resides in the fact that for the first time inside Spain a theatrical work discusses the moral consequences of the Civil War.

The victory of the insurgent forces was historically anomalous in that it represented a return to an oligarchic type of government not in consonance with the West's movement...