Barcelona, 1995
Àfrica Alonso graduated as an actress from the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona, where she took her first steps in the performing arts, play writing and production. After taking part in several musical, theatrical and television shows, she premiered the first play of her own in 2020, Una luz tímida, which has been successfully staged for four seasons at the principal theatres of Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid. The play was inspired by the true story of two women in Francoist Spain and also provides the basis of her first novel, Una luz timida, published by Seix Barral (Spanish) and Empúries (Catalan) in 2024.
- “In the midst of the need to strengthen the rights and visibility of the LGBTQ+ community, works such as Una luz tímida remind society of why we should never forget history and much less go back.” Cinemagavía
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A beautiful story of impossible love. Two women united forever in the wrong epoch.
At the height of the Franco dictatorship, in a small Valencian town, two teachers, Isabel and Carmen, fall in love and begin a furtive affair, at a time when lesbianism was considered immoral and criminal and therefore almost unthinkable. Isabel is mature and brave, she has cut ties with her family and accepts herself just as she is. Carmen, on the other hand, is fragile and dependent.
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Novel
A beautiful story of impossible love. Two women united forever in the wrong epoch.
Drawing on her own highly successful theatre play, which was based on a true story that shocked public opinion at the time, África Alonso has now rewritten it as a novel.
At the height of the Franco dictatorship, in a small Valencian town, two teachers, Isabel and Carmen, fall in love and begin a furtive affair, at a time when lesbianism was considered immoral and criminal and therefore almost unthinkable. Isabel is mature and brave, she has cut ties with her family and accepts herself just as she is. Carmen, on the other hand, is fragile and dependent.
When Carmen’s family finds out about this forbidden love, they intern her in a clinic to cure what they consider to be a deviation. Carmen will be a victim of inhuman abuse that will tragically mark the fate of a relationship doomed by its very nature, condemned by the family and society in a country stained by moral corruption.
“In the midst of the need to strengthen the rights and visibility of the LGBTQ+ community, works such as A Timid Light remind society of why we should never forget history and much less go back.”—Diego Dacosta, Cinemagavía