La Ternura was awarded the Max Award for the best theatrical show of 2019 and is one of Alfredo Sanzol’s great works.

Inspired by comedies by William Shakespeare, La Ternura is ‘about the impossibility of protecting ourselves from the damage caused by love’, in the words of its author. Alfredo Sanzol, one of the best contemporary Spanish playwrights, weaves a plot of entanglements and infatuation in the sixteenth century to tell with a smile that ‘without tenderness love is not seen’.

SYNOPSIS

La Ternura tells the story of a queen who is a bit of a magician and her two princess daughters who travel in the Invincible Armada, forced by Philip II to marry in marriages of convenience with English nobles once the invasion of England was successfully achieved. The Emerald Queen hates men because they have always conditioned her life and taken away her freedom, so she is not willing for her daughters to have the same fate as her. When the Armada passes near an island that the Queen considers deserted, it creates a storm that sinks the ship they are traveling on. Her plan is to stay and live on that island with her daughters so that she will never see a man again in her life.

The problem is that they choose an island where a woodcutter has lived for twenty years with his two children, who fled there never to see a woman again in their lives. When the queen and the two princesses discover that they are not alone, they dress as men to protect themselves. And that’s where the adventures, entanglements, infatuations and confusions begin