Calderón, Anero Puente y la escritura de la historia

Abstract

The play Luis Perez el gallego. Segunda parte, written by the Sevillian soldier and erudite Manuel de Anero Puente and staged in Madrid in 1717, constitutes one of the most unique episodes in the history of early modern theater during its most immediate posterity. With Calderon de la Barca's death (1681) fresh in the collective memory, and still without a defined set of parameters regarding the aesthetic preferences of the new century, Anero Puente took over Calderon's unfinished project, namely, a segunda parte to his piece Luis Perez el gallego (1629) that was promised, but never written. Anero Puente's sequel, however, emancipated itself from the Baroque model, placing its protagonist not as a bandit in Philip II's time as Calderon had done, but rather as an imperial soldier fighting under Charles V in the famous attack on La Goleta (1535). His play, I argue in this essay, responded to a moment of great political and literary uncertainty, still in the aftermath of the War of Succession (1701-1714), and with the theater scene in need of local heroes. Ultimately, I read this Luis Perez el gallego as a text that provides a fascinating wrinkle in Spain's intellectual history, for it allows us to reflect on the ethical and political responsibility of the sequel as a critical intervention that simultaneously rejects and celebrates the model it departs from.