EL MAR

This is the story of a promise made by a teacher to his students, a promise that could not be kept. The teacher was Antoni Benaiges. The students were children at the small rural school of Bañuelos de Bureba, a village in the province of Burgos. He made the promise on a winter’s day in 1936. He promised them the sea.

In 1934, the young Catalan teacher Antoni Benaiges came to the small rural school of Bañuelos de Bureba, a tiny village in Burgos. A few months later, he used his own money to buy a gramophone and a basic printing press. From his very first year, the children published their emotions, thoughts and dreams. In January 1936, they published El mar. Visión de unos niños que no lo han visto nunca (The Sea. Vision of children who have never seen it). The booklet “contains, in verse format rather than prose, the school-children’s expressions of how they imagine the sea, their fears and their dreams.” None of the children had seen the sea. The teacher promised them he would take them to Catalonia that very summer to see it. Benaiges was executed on 25 July 1936. The teacher could not keep his promise.

This play – the first time that Xavier Bobés and Alberto Conejero have worked on a creative project together – offers a device in which objects, poems and the documentary material combine on equal terms.