The publisher Editorial Renacimiento has rescued the work of María Lejárraga, the woman who wrote the works which made her husband, Gregorio Martínez Sierra, become successful.

A novelist and playwright, she died poor and in exile. She wrote in silence and in solitude between four walls, far away from the applause for the plays that flowed from her pen. Her name is an absence, a shadow, a void, and a painful story. María de la O Lejárraga (San Millán de la Cogolla, 1874 – Buenos Aires, 1974) lived an entire century and was one of those brilliant and pioneer women of the Silver Age of Spanish literature, which spanned from 1900 until the Spanish Civil War. She was a novelist, playwright, essayist, translator, and feminist; nevertheless, she was absent from the covers of her books. The name we read is that of her husband – Gregorio Martínez Sierra – who received all the praise at the premieres of Canción de Cuna (Song of the Cradle) or El amor brujo (Spellbound Love) and El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-cornered Hat) by Manuel de Falla, while the author and librettist waited back at home.

Read the whole article here: EL PAÍS - CULTURA