I’ve just unravelled a small mystery which Conan Doyle might have called A Scandal in Cuenca. It started with someone buying a 32-page manuscript at auction this week for £1,125. “We could trace no printed version of this text,” the catalogue had said. They can’t be much good at tracing, for it was a popular sainete or playlet called Fuera, which, I discover, caused a little riot on 21 July 1802 at Cuenca in deepest Spain. Cuenca is a medieval city balanced (cathedral and all) on a spine of rock between two gorges.
A company of comic actors visited the city (then of 8,000 people squashed into tall tenements hanging from the rock), but the vicar-general of Bishop Antonio Palafox, whom enemies accused of Jansenist tendencies, denounced their programme (including Fuera – said to contain “expressions lacking decency”) to the Corregidor, or Royal Governor.
When the players tried to stage some of the condemned works, a cleric was sent to read their excommunication. The Corregidor, taking his evening walk, heard the commotion and found a heaving crowd shouting for the show to go on. He shouted too, blaming the prelate for not first asking the aid of royal authority.
21 July 2021, The Tablet
The excommunication was pasted up at the cathedral and bells of 12 parishes rang out…
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