In order to take part, you must correctly answer the following question: “What was the name of the most important leader of the resistance in the Rif region, the founder and first president of the Republic of the Rif?”You have until January 10 to respond (including that date). Two invitations for two people will be selected at random from all those who give the right answer. The result will be communicated to the winners on Tuesday, January 11 (DRAWING ALREADY COMPLETE).

The play ends what has formed a sort of memorial trilogy, which began with El triángulo azul (The Blue Triangle, 2014) and Donde el bosque se espesa (Where the Woods Grow Thick, 2018). With a script by Laia Ripoll and Mariano Llorente, it will be playing at the Valle-Inclán Theater until January 30, 2022. 

Cast: Arantxa Aranguren, Néstor Ballesteros, Juanjo Cucalón, Ibrahim Ibnou Goush, Carlos Jiménez-Alfaro, Mariano Llorente, Mateo Rubistein, Sara Sánchez and Jorge Varandela.

The main characters are three soldiers from the Spanish army who end up in the Rif region after the Disaster of Annual, which took place on July 22, 1921. These three soldiers represent the thousands of young Spaniards dragged away from their homes and the thousands of Rifians forced to fight for the Spanish in order to avoid starvation and poverty. Through their history, tales and experiences, which take place in sadly infamous places like Igueriben, Zeluán and Monte Arruit, and lasting until the ill-fated year of 1936, important personages from those wars are shown to us: politicians, high commissioners, kings, barmaids, prostitutes, qadis, film artists, journalists, military and civilians. As if viewing a grotesque nightmare, we get a chance to witness the musical bars and blockhouses, the pasodoble dance and the call to prayer, the local villages and military marches, along with the brothel, the ravine, the casino, the watering hole, the ambush, the dirty business, the bravery of some, the treachery of others, the fear among most, the bayonet, the dagger, the carbine, the unbearable thirst, the charred corpse, the severed head, the entrails... in short, everything seen in an unnecessary, unjust and cruel war that caused thousands of deaths among Spaniards and Rifians, including the use of toxic gases, with major consequences for the future in the twentieth century.

Through Rif (on lice and mustard gas), we ask ourselves the following question more than any other: What right did Spain have to colonize and exploit the Rif region? From this starting point, when we look back at what was left after almost half a century of the Spanish Protectorate, after thousands of deaths on both sides, after the unbearable cruelty of mutilations, fires and bombings, after the perverse exploitation of indigenous Rifians by one Spanish government after the other in an attempt to make up for the high death rate amongst Spanish soldiers; despite all that, we believe the show must answer the initial question with a mix of both humor and sadness. We find no other way but sarcasm and pain to reveal the bottomless corruption of the military establishment and its ridiculous concept of manhood, as well as the rapacious pillaging of rulers and mining companies. But we also want to show on stage the shock felt by a whole country, “all hullabaloo and tambourine,” as a famous poet once said, watching as their sons were sent off to die for nothing, and forced to kill natives as unfortunate and as poor as they were, with every right to protect their own land.