Since the mid-nineteenth century up to the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, the extraordinary popularity of the Valencian sainet – short plays of one to two acts – was due to the effervescent and prolific production of these new dramatic works capable of depicting the world of the Valencians as no genre did before. In these plays – analysed in this book in their original versions – the plots encapsulated systems of symbolic expression shaped by ethnicity, ideology, languages, kinship, beliefs, social construct and cultural capital, as the fictional frame offered to an audience was perceived as an imaginable reality. The stories they told, transferred from the street onto paper and the stage by Valencian playwrights, gave voice to characters dealing with complex contemporary socio-political issues happening in Valencian time and space settings. Demeaned since the beginning of Franco's dictatorship due to narratives of cultural exclusion, the genre is here the subject of a vivid first-time analysis of its role in shaping the Valencian socio-cultural identity during a precise timeframe.
