Description

Fernando Arrabal

Translated by Peter Thompson

Letter to General Franco

ISBN: 978-1-956921-43-4 (pbk.)

(February 2025) 

Fernando Arrabal (full name Fernando Arrabal Terán, born 1932 in Melilla, Spain) is the author of hundreds of books, plays, poems, screenplays, operas and other creative projects in both French and Spanish. He has directed seven full-length feature films and has published over 100 plays; 14 novels; and 800 poetry collections, chapbooks, and artists’ books. His complete plays have been published in multiple languages in a two-volume edition totaling over two thousand pages.

His famous Letter to General Franco, written and sent during the dictator’s lifetime, is the most provocative of several “letters” he wrote to various political leaders and organizations. When Franco’s insurrection began in 1936, Fernando’s father was arrested for his loyalty to the Republic and sentenced to death. Though the sentence was later commuted and his father subsequently escaped, he was never seen again. About this Arrabal would write:

“Without trying to compare what is incomparable, when I confront these twilight episodes (and quite often without any logical connection), I think of that scapegoat, my father. The day on which the Uncivil War began, he was locked up by his ‘compassionate companions’ in the flag room of the Melilla military barracks. He was meant to think carefully, since he risked a death sentence for mutiny if he did not join them in their insurrection (alzamiento). After an hour, Lieutenant Fernando Arrabal summoned his ex-comrades – already! – to inform them that he had pondered long enough. Today, because of this precedent, shouldn’t I serve as witness, example, or symbol, as he did, of the most fundamental occurrences? I, who am a mere exile.”

His exile in Paris, to escape a fate similar to his father’s, did turn out to be productive, as his work there prompted New York Times‘ theatre critic Mel Gussow to call him the last survivor among the “three avatars of modernism”.

The Letter to General Franco appears here for the first time in English.