Los santos inocentes is one of the great novels of the 20th century and its magnitude is only heightened by the challenge of transforming it into a theatrical text.

In just over one hundred and fifty pages, Delibes creates a universe that is so solid and truthful that it sometimes seems to transcend its author, to exist above him and indeed even in spite of him. It is inhabited by extraordinary, joyful characters who seem more alive and more complex with each new reading, who emerge from a lucid and merciless observation of the Spain of an era, which is also an observation of human beings, the world and, above all, the Spain of today. All this through the precise prose that seems to invent literature in every line: anyone who has read Los santos inocentes knows this to be true.

Quite intentionally, we wanted to divert our gaze from the legendary film that Mario Camus filmed in 1984 with a script he wrote together with Antonio Larreta and Manuel Matjí, with which he turned the screens and box offices on their heads and fixed the names of Paco, el Bajo and Azarías forever in the collective retina. Our offering reinterprets the characters from today's point of view our, at least, from our own.

We have seen traces of an anomalous hero in Azarías, the big silent heart and great lucidity of Regula, the unpunished wickedness of Ivan, who damages everything and wounds everything and wants to kill everything as if he were involved in a frenzied race against himself... With his steely resignation, Paco, is perhaps the character in Los santos inocentes who concerns us the most. Paco, el Bajo is the question and each and every one of us is the answer.

Fernando Marías