La sociedad española de la década de los sesenta en el teatro de Alfonso Paso

Abstract

Alfonso Paso was, without doubt, the most prolific of the post-war Spanish playwrights. His numerous theatrical productions, of which there are more than a hundred comedies, led the playwright to a popularity which in turn permitted him to rise within the theatrical hegemony of the time, filling the Spanish stage with an unending series of plays with clear commercial nuances in which the main element is humour. This humour was conceived for the humoristic sensibility of the growing middle class at the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties, whose tastes and interests were ideal material for Paso. The unquestionable sociological nuance in Paso’s plays is therefore particularly important since it allows us make a literary study of what Franco’s regime was like, or rather what the society of this regime was like between 1950 and 1971. This article is written with this in mind, and various aspects present in the works of Alfonso Paso are analysed, such as the middle class, the role of women, social changes, and the influence of tourism and immigration in the Spain of that period.