The play Carmen Nada de nadie, the fascinating life of Carmen Díez de Rivera, “muse of the Spanish Transition”, starring Mónica López, Oriol Tarrasón, Ana Fernández and Víctor Massan, will be at the Teatro Español (Plaza Santa Ana, C. del Príncipe, 25) until 18 February.
The play traces the main milestones in the life of the woman who was chief of staff to former president Adolfo Suárez and MEP, a feminist and risk-taking free woman.
During the government of Adolfo Suárez she held a post that no woman had ever held before, head of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government. She was elected MEP in the late 1980s and died in 1999 at the age of 57.
Free, feminist, independent and daring, Carmen Díez de Rivera was a brave woman of aristocratic origins who knew how to build and direct her own life, above her personal and social circumstances, which brought her loneliness and incomprehension.
On stage, the character recounts the high points of an intense and challenging political career, mainly the period he worked in Suárez’s government, while recalling the intimate episodes that marked his unhappiness and his character. Her father was Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law and minister in the dictator’s first governments. Serrano had an extramarital affair with Díez de Rivera’s mother, Sonsoles de Icaza y de León, from which Díez de Rivera was born. When she was about to marry her fiancé, she was told that he was Serrano Suñer’s son and, therefore, her brother.
Three of the most important figures in 20th century Spanish history, Suárez himself, King Juan Carlos and the Communist Party leader Santiago Carrillo, will pass through the memory of Díez de Rivera’s character and before the spectator. Díez de Rivera’s links with them during the period of the Transition that led to the legalisation of the PCE in 1977 is the focus of Carmen, nada de nadie. Tickets can be purchased at this link.