The Tyrannies of the In-Between: Liminality in Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Historia de una escalera

Abstract

Scholars of Spanish theater have often interpreted Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Historia de una escalera (1949) as an allegory for the prison-like atmosphere of postwar Spain. This article expands that concept to present an interpretation of the play’s setting as a liminal space—closely tied to Michel Foucault’s concepts of the heterotopia and the panopticon—between the intimate space of the home and the exposed, public streets of Madrid. Within the liminal stairway, residents transgress the boundaries of privacy through communal vigilance and internalized surveillance, frequently referred to in Spain as “el qué dirán,” which reflect the social context of Francisco Franco’s Spain in the 1940s. The power structures that emerge within the stairway reveal how liminality can confine its subjects in a transitional state over several generations.