Billy Kidd takes the stage and the transition shrinks again

The Teatro del Barrio in Madrid premiered its own production Honor Billy baby. A political theater that once again depicts the political transition of Spain from Franco’s dictatorship to democracy. The premiere was also attended by Luis Suarez-Carenio – the first victim of the dictatorship that filed individual complaints in Spain in 2017 against three members of the social political brigade, including Billy El Nino – and the late Chatteau’s wife. Galante, a reviewer of the Justa Montero feminist movement. Both Galante and Suarez-Carenio were tortured by Antonio Gonzalez Pacheco, known by his nickname Billy El Nino. It is not uncommon to watch a documentary on the stage about the repressions of the late Franco regime and the early years of democracy, which also includes the testimonies of the victims themselves.

The lights go out, the play begins and the text is written: “This is a tribute story. An important story of democratic coexistence. A story of life dedicated to scenery and order in recognition of order. My order. Our order. 1977 “. The ideological positioning of this work, written by Ruth Sanchez and Jessica Belda, is clear from the outset. A twist that is a torn rage and a willingness to condemn and correct. Ahead is Billy Kidd, a police officer and martyr of the politico-social brigade in the last years of the Franco regime, and also a martyr as a new and, already in Democracy, high-ranking police inspector in the obscure Central tion Brigade. A police career that ended with medals and a good pension.

Billy Kidd died in 2020, with all the awards intact. The work deals with the tribute from the Spanish state to this torture. From this tribute and from a society that was at the same time fascinated by new freedoms that wanted to change for the better, it decided not to see, not to listen, and to “fix” the state sewer. ”Things.

“My vertebrates are broken”

“The first floor of the Director General of Security. Koneza looks at me, Billy Kidd asks me, a policeman whose identity I can not print. My data. I am asked about Eva Forrest’s relationship. I try to answer the caller (…) I feel his breath on my face. I can smell it. They hold me in my arms. They make me tremble. Blows, first in the back. The pain is terrible. The vertebrates are broken. Will be hung. Now in the abdomen, stomach, and liver. “You are not giving birth now. Beach. These words that are now heard on stage are nothing more than part of the testimony of lawyer Lydia Falcone in the case of Argentine Judge Maria Servin against the crimes of Francoism, which forced her to request the extradition of Billy El. Nino in 2013 and this was denied by the Spanish state. Crimes were committed.Spain is governed by the 1977 Amnesty Act and a figure of crimes against humanity that Serwin claims was not accepted.

The process opened by Servin and the testimonies contained in it are the documentary basis of the work. Thus, throughout it we hear the words of Chateau Galante, Felice Echegoen or Willy Meyer. In this way, we will learn about torture, humiliation, baths, telephone directories, cruelty of the genitals and soles of the feet, cigarette burns, weapons that aim and shoot without a bullet, but hit the brain … unfortunately. We have not heard from Enrique Rouano, a 22-year-old student who did not survive this tale and was thrown out the window to cover up his murder. All this arrest and torture takes place in the General Directorate of Security, in the Puerta del Sol building – now a completely new place for the Madrid Community Government – which still frightens many when they look at its basement, the shattered windows where Billy. The child and the police tortured him so much. The work takes advantage of the figure that is still represented in the imagination of Madrid, and turns it into a symbol through the effect of lighting: on the ground we can see the shadow of a pencil strip. The building becomes the central protagonist of the work and manages to create even an unexpected character, a radiator in the corridor, who witnesses the coming and going of prisoners between the buttocks and the interrogation rooms. The radiator tells us how he can not be, like the Spaniards, a mere spectator who does not really know what is going on.

Anger-based twist

The play has had many successes, both in terms of directing Eva Redondo and in terms of dramaturgy and acting. Three graceful actors on stage: Jesus Baranco, Jessica Belda (also the author) and Antonio Gomez, who can go from a harsh testimony of the victim to a farce, parody or pure cabaret. And that is what the montage decides to imprint in this dark room of our history with an anger-based irony that the director knows how to incorporate dynamism, humor, and at the same time rudeness. More than ten years ago, in 2009, Andres Lima director Animalario revolutionized the national stage. Uratin, An installation about a Spanish boxer; Under the influence Biographical The Argentine knew how to combine a biography and review of recent Spanish history into a theater that combined document, fictional situations and a parody of cabaret. Somehow Honor Billy baby He follows in their footsteps and becomes the fighter and probable son of this work.

Another feature of the work is that torture violence is never presented. “It did not seem respectful to me to put pictures on these testimonies. You can not imagine so much suffering. The priority was that there was no representation of this torture and that word prevailed in the first person on stage. I even allowed myself to delve into the irony that was already contained in the text, to reinforce it on stage to make this more documentary part theatrical. It also seeks the viewer to have an emotional distance, in the purest Brechtian style, ”explains director Eva Redondo to todaytimeslive.com.

While all these distances that Redondo talks about do not always work, the work has some excellent ones. An example is how Jessica Belda explains by the number of Coopetero and punishes the relationship of European fascist groups and their conspiracy with the Spanish police. Thus, Belda becomes Marietta, a traveler and an effective weapon for the Spanish police. Between Gracieta chulapa and leg up, in our country the so-called. The existence of Operation Gladio, orchestrated by the United States and NATO, is collapsing for fear that the Warsaw Pact countries will invade Western Europe. A little-known story that focuses on one of the tragedies of democratic Spain, the massacre of Atocha’s lawyers, on which Billy Kidd’s shadow casts, and his relationship with Italian neo-fascism. Billy Kidd will have to testify about this at the 1979 Atocha massacre trial.

Similarly, there are actors Jesus Baranco, undefeated Rodolfo Martin Villa and Antonio Gomez portraying the character of Billy El Nino. Gomez, with the disgusting point that belongs to him, has enough sewage to handle the role and gradually greeted him with a dehumanized rage in his body. Perhaps this round performance could be summed up in the movement of his jaw, insignificant, almost imperceptibly, but very addictive; And in the last text that closes the work, a text of dark, painful, violent, and sexual poetry that leaves the revered seated, with a rigid correctness evoked by disgust.

Theater is not a ministry

The ideological load of the work, its frontal position in relation to these events, and the transitional vision beyond the acidic vision (the photo taken by Martin Villa is the most corrosive) cast doubt on whether the work has sounds and perspectives. This is clearly stated by one of its authors, Ruth Sanchez. “It seems that there is a kind of consensus that when a play is about a political event or moment, one can call on the author to offer different points of view, as if the theater is a ministry. Of course, we only give a vision, and the vision we give is how the torture took place, which is reflected in a legal complaint that could not even be opened in this country and should have been opened in Argentina. We already had a lot of great Saturdays and PCE legalization, right? “It comes from the dark sewers, from the hosts that the left-wing military has received,” he said.

“He is not satisfied with the left either,” Eva Redondo added. “The left has promoted silence and this is an act of great violence. For me, there are faces that come up in support of Martin Villa that hurt so much. “The face of Pattero or Candido Mendes is particularly painful,” Redondo explained, referring to the stage where the characters, Felipe Gonzalez, Nicolas Redondo, Jose Maria Aznar, Mariano Rajoy and the aforementioned Pattero and Mendes, wrote letters. Support for Martin Villa before an extradition request by an Argentine judge.

The play ends with the actors on the stage receiving applause. Instead the faces of the victims of that repression are installed. “It was important for the people who fought for our rights and freedoms. We wanted to change the tribute. Personally, they have given me great strength in this process. I felt very small when I saw that even after being tortured, they were returning to the army after being released from prison. “It seemed necessary for them to put their mouths down,” the director concludes.

Job positioning is clear. The director hopes that political positions will not close the door for him to enter the theater circle: “Only yesterday, two bowling alleys were closed. “I hope he can not only visit certain cities, the play speaks to the foundations of our democracy, and I think it can be a democratic exercise and the development of strong critical thinking, which is essential for a young audience as well.”