The Principal Palace Theatre was a Barcelona venue associated with a notable season of Federico García Lorca’s plays in late 1935. Blood Wedding opened there to great acclaim on 22 November, and Doña Rosita the Spinster followed on 12 December with a triumphant premiere. The theatre thus figures in the account of Lorca’s growing public success shortly before the political crisis and his death in 1936.

The 1935 Barcelona season

After a Barcelona season that had included Yerma, the company led by Margarita Xirgu returned to the city and presented both Blood Wedding and Doña Rosita the Spinster at the Principal Palace Theatre. Blood Wedding opened on 22 November to great acclaim. Lorca directed its music and accompanied the lullaby in the second scene of Act One on the piano, joining the production not only as playwright but as an active musical participant.

The premiere of Doña Rosita the Spinster followed on 12 December and was described as an even greater success. Set in Granada, the play follows Rosita over twenty-five years as she waits for her fiancé to return; hope gradually gives way to recognition that he will not. Its reception added to a season in which Lorca’s work drew packed houses and sustained public attention in Barcelona.

Place in Lorca’s career

The two productions at the theatre belonged to a remarkable period of theatrical visibility. Earlier in 1935, Lorca had three plays running in Madrid at once, an unusual event for the theatre of the time. By year’s end, his work was also flourishing in Barcelona: the press regularly covered him, and Doña Rosita the Spinster was given a special performance for flower-sellers of the Ramblas. A banquet attended by Catalonia’s artists and intellectuals further marked the public recognition he had achieved. The Principal Palace Theatre was one of the settings for this success, though the cited account does not describe its architecture or location within the city.

Later production history

The Principal Palace Theatre also appears in the broader history of Lorca’s theatre through Blood Wedding’s return to its stage in 1935. The play’s earlier 1933 premiere had taken place in Madrid; its Barcelona opening at the Principal Palace Theatre was a later production, not its premiere. The venue is also mentioned in the account of the 1964 production of The House of Bernarda Alba: after its opening in Madrid, Juan Antonio Bardem’s production played at the Teatro Principal in Zaragoza the following year. That Zaragoza venue is distinct from Barcelona’s Principal Palace Theatre and should not be confused with it.