Fuenteovejuna, Antonio Gades’ greatest creation, is above all extremely beautiful, the final work of his personal and artistic maturity. Its subtle emotional quality does not come from its refined aesthetic or its showmanship, but rather from its great simplicity, as it expresses the essence of the stories it wants to tell. An essence that only a select few, such as Gades in  the world of dance or Peter Brook in that of theatre, have been able to capture and communicate, almost always after a long process accompanied by considerable sacrifice. This piece is based on the comedy of the same name by Lope de Vega, it is very different to the source material that usually inspires Spanish dance and flamenco, including works by this choreographer.

The play was written in 1612 - 1614 based on a historic event previously published in the Crónica de las tres Órdenes Militares by Rades y Andrada. It tells how an entire village in the Alta Andalucía area, Fuenteovejuna, rebelled against the abuses of an aristocrat, the Commander of the Order of Calatrava, Fernán Gómez de Guzmán,  who was eventually executed. When the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand send a magistrate to investigate, not even the worst of tortures force the villagers to point to a ringleader. As one voice, they all declare the whole village to be responsible for killing the ignoble noble and accept their fate as the consequence. This sense of solidarity had an obvious appeal to the political ideas and social aspirations of Antonio Gades, who listened to the suggestion of the writer and flamenco scholar, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, and decided to take the project on. Gades was able to make every voice and every body - the choruses of men and women often act as a single voice and a single body in this work- express their own unique language, just as the characters in the Lope play use the words and verses they are most in tune with. Fuenteovejuna is undoubtedly one of the great ballets of the 20th century.