Los asquerosos

Manuel has injured a police officer and fled the scene, hiding out at his uncle's house. He doesn’t know the extent of the injury, but his uncle advises him to disappear: no matter how serious it is, they will find him and he will spend a long time in prison. Manuel’s only option is to flee by night and hide out in a remote, abandoned village, one that the two men decide to call Zarzahuriel. There, despite having almost nothing and surviving by a thread, Manual discovers his good life. He is only in telephone contact with his uncle, who helps as much as he can remotely. The peace, calm and freedom that Manual experiences in Zarzahuriel mean that he doesn’t miss anything; on the contrary, his precariousness is what brings him closer to happiness, close enough to almost touch it. And things stay this way until an urban family, “mochufas” as he calls them, decides to enjoy rural life by acquiring and taking up residence in another one of the abandoned houses in Zarzahuriel. This unexpected coexistence will disrupt Manuel’s existence and contaminate his paradise forever.

The theatrical adaptation of Santiago Lorenzo’s novel captures the entire adventure through the gaze of the two men, Manual and his uncle. With each in his own space, they experience the different phases of Manuel’s life together, separated by distance but united on the stage, as if they were in the same place: the initial fear of losing his freedom, the discovery of the joy of a solitary and precarious life, the ridiculousness of the weekend visitors contaminating his paradise, his return to the city, and the definitive end of the search for absolute freedom. All of this is expressed in the radical and unclassifiable Spanish of Santiago Lorenzo, who gives the story a sense of humour that is, simply, different from what we are accustomed to.