Hinojosa

In 2019, the head of Cardinal Belluga [Motril, 1662 - Roma, 1743] fell and rolled along the floor. The stern, skull-capped, sculpted head of the moralist from Motril could not bear to face the Teatro Calderón de la Barca in aeternum, and so detached itself from the rest of his body. The fevered imagination of Luis Antonio de Belluga y Moncada regarded theatre, music, dance and, above all, women as the devil’s tools for inoculating man with sin.

Already in her day, María Antonia Vallejo Fernández, known as "La Caramba", was the object of fascination for her beauty, her enormous power of seduction, her mischievous witticisms, her grace in the art of singing and, finally, her unusual religious conversion and retirement at the height of her career. Her memory did not disappear after her death, but in the 19th and 20th centuries her figure, already in the realm of legend, was the subject of songs, books, zarzuelas and films. In this programme we propose to return to the sources that founded the myth of La Caramba, trying to understand a little more about this extraordinary woman.