08/08/2025 International Festival of Classical Theatre of Almagro
In 2011, I had the privilege of participating as an actress in a play by Lope de Vega at the International Festival of Classical Theatre, which takes place every year in the town of Almagro, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. It was a transformative and revolutionary experience in my life. Suddenly, I was where it all began: Cervantes and his Quixote, Lorca and his delights, Lope, Calderón, Tirso, the verse, the duels and heartbreaks, the maidens and marquises, the windmills, the washerwomen… Everything that had nourished my imagination for years was materializing. The theater I adored took on a new dimension; it was as if I were discovering it for the first time. I was ecstatic!
I returned to Spain years later as a teacher. I traveled everywhere giving acting courses, sharing those techniques I had refined in my Buenos Aires background. Thus, in journeys back and forth, everything blended: the boundaries blurred and what was mine became theirs and what was theirs, mine. But… I still longed to return to Almagro! To that classical theatre festival that, as Lope says, only “those who have experienced it know.”
And finally, this year it happened! Just now, when life has opened even wider horizons for me, and I find myself living and being in English. Sometimes I imagine that what I am is a bridge: connecting, communicating, and moving forward.
I am older, calmer, and yet my emotions still get tangled with these trips to Spain and their late nights, rushes, tapas and drinks, talks, meetings and partings, friends, performances, and the inevitable sleeplessness. I keep dreaming and walking, because there are still more bridges to build and cultures to communicate. And since, ultimately, I am a neighborhood girl turned porteña who has thrown herself into adventure, nostalgia suits me well and, like in tango, my life “Yira, yira”.
Pucha, it’s always hard for me to leave…