Michael Coy
Fuente Ovejuna means a lot to Spanish people. It’s a bit like “Hamlet” for native British folks – something you read in school, and which takes its place as part of the nation’s culture.
Before we get into it, a quick word about English, and how it’s different from all the other European languages. Countries like Spain and France have a ‘language academy’, which decides which words are officially permitted.
For example, recently the Spanish Academy announced that it’s now OK to use ‘solo’ without an accent (the word used to be ‘sólo’). English doesn’t have any such controls: it’s a totally democratic language. The people decide how to use it. If someone had said to you, 50 years ago, that their ironing-board was ‘user-friendly’, the expression would have been meaningless, but now we all accept it.
The village of today’s discussion is either called “Fuente Ovejuna”, or “Fuenteobejuna”. Both are correct. Spain’s academy says that ‘b’ and ‘v’ are interchangeable.
The village
On its west side, central-southern Spain consists of three great territories: there is Extremadura, the land of the Conquistadors, and La Mancha, the domain of Don Quijote, and of course Andalucía, the home of flamenco and bullfighting.
Fuente Ovejuna stands on the frontier of all three. It is in fact part of Andalucía, being located 60 miles north-west of Córdoba, but it is very much a border town. There is some dispute about the village’s name. Clearly, ‘Fuente’ means ‘spring’, as in ‘watering hole’. Some experts say that the full name means ‘Sheep’s Watering-Hole’, while other linguists suggest that ‘Ovejuna’ comes from ‘abeja’, meaning ‘bee’.
he Olive Press appeals to the common sense of its readership – sheep are more likely to use a watering-hole than bees! In the year 1476, the people of Fuente Ovejuna rebelled against their overlord, and killed him.
The playwright
Lope de Vega is often referred to as the Spanish Shakespeare. He was born two years before Shakespeare, and outlived him by two decades. The two men are often compared, and in some ways Lope’s achievements are the more impressive: we have 37 Shakespeare plays, some of which were probably co-written with other dramatists, and 100-odd sonnets.
Lope’s plays number 500, and he left us 3,000 sonnets. He also wrote religious poems and nine novels in poetic form. Not only did Lope de Vega find time for all of this, while keeping five mistresses happy – he was also a priest! His greatest play, it is universally agreed, was “Fuente Ovejuna”. It was written in 1612, the year in which Shakepeare wrote ”The Tempest”.
The drama
The village has been ‘occupied’ by a group of knights from La Mancha. The leader of the knights regards the citizens as his vassals, and the women as his playthings.
He rapes one of the village girls and the people, without thinking about the consequences of their actions, attack him and kill him.
In those days the King travelled around the country, ‘holding court’ – literally judging the big criminal cases in each community. King Ferdinand arrives in Fuente Ovejuna, and demands to know who killed Rodrigo, the head of the knights. He puts each villager in the witness box, and asks the same question – “Who is responsible for this man’s death?” Every villager gives the same answer: “El pueblo.”
The idea
In Spanish, ‘el pueblo’ carries two meanings. It signifies ‘the people’, and it also means ‘the village’. The king is impressed that these decent citizens acted together when their honour was outraged, and he rules that there was no individual murderer – “the pueblo did it.” The play is dear to Spanish audiences because it’s about having two virtues: civic pride and a reliable moral compass.
Today
Every summer, the people of Fuente Ovejuna put on a production of ‘their’ play in the village’s main square. They don’t need a theatre because this hot region gets no rain between March and October, and the actors can perform, and the audience can watch, comfortably in the open air. The only restriction is, the actors must be citizens of Fuente Ovejuna!
