Last afternoons with Teresa

In our lesson today we are going to focus on getting to know the main characters of Last afternoons with Teresa. This novel written by the writer Juan Marsé in 1965 it had considerable success, and was even the winner of the Short Library award the same year it was written. So take good note, because today, in a PROFESSOR, we are going to know in detail this great Spanish work from the middle of the 20th century.

But before meeting its main characters, it is necessary to know what the plot of the play is, don't you think? Let's go with it.

Last afternoons with Teresa narrates the relationship between a motorcycle thief settled in Barcelona, ​​called Manolo, el Pijoaparte, who pretends to be a revolutionary worker, and a bourgeois college girl with a touch of rebellion, Teresa.

Add that your relationship is born to collation of an accident suffered by Maruja, a friend of the girl and a maid of her parents, in an environment that mixes bourgeoisie and marginalization, with openly foul language to imitate the slang of the Catalan slums of The time.

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We are going to know who they are and how the main characters of Last afternoons with Teresa. Take note:

Manolo

Nicknamed El Pijoaparte, he is a low-class liar. She comes from Ronda, in Malaga, but went to Barcelona to stay with her older brother. In other words, it is what is known in Catalonia as charnego, of parents from outside the land.

He is a handsome and strong boy, but also a liar who moves on pure instinct and imagination. So that, he pretends to be a revolutionary worker, which gives an image of the complex inner world that he possesses, although it is not precisely intelligence that predominates in his actions.

He is affected by an episode that happened to him with a girl from France in his childhood, which has left him some trauma.

Also he always seeks to be accepted by the highest social classes and privileged. For this reason he constructs in his mind scenarios in which he is the hero who saves the lady in distress, not if certain erotic connotations. However, he is a way of feeling worthy of respect.

She meets Teresa at a party where he sneaks in as a guest, where he has a relationship with Maruja, a service girl. However, when she falls into a deep coma, he is curious about Teresa, a high-class girl who little by little will take out of him a sensitive background behind her tough boy facade.

Teresa

This girl Catalan bourgeois class she is a university student who is attracted to Manolo, for what this boy represents risky and rebellious. She is looking for an adventure and the desire to lose her virginity, and she sees the perfect opportunity in the young man.

She feels strongly attracted, but not so much in love, for Manolo, but more in the form of desire, and she is intrigued by the worker conspiracies that Pijoaparte invents.

She is a spoiled girl, used to not wanting any whims, and to whom the rules of her mother do not matter much. She is a very attractive girl, with revolutionary overtones, elegant, dreamy and confident.

Maruja

Finally, we have Maruja, the servant of the Serrat, Teresa's parents, whom she admires, and that she has been raised since she was a child along with the protagonist. She can cover the excesses of this and she is the daughter of poor peasants. She is a believing girl, humble and resigned to her position.

Maruja provoca mixed feelings in Manolor, which disorients the protagonist. Since she is a girl in need of love, she arouses quite a lot of contempt towards the Pijoaparte. The way she is, good and confident, is not to the liking of the Malaga.

Other interesting characters that appear in the play, but that belong to the secondary cast are Bernardo, Manolo's friend, and his girlfriend, Rosa, as well as her friend, Rosa.

The Cardinal also appears, who is the one who runs the neighborhood in which Manolo steals, and who also acts as his protector, his niece, Hortensia, in love with the charnego, his brother and his wife. she is Pijiaparte's sister-in-law, Maruja's father and brother, or Teresa, Oriol and Marta's parents, along with a group of college student friends, led by Luis Trías.