Maneras de entender: el conflicto generacional en el teatro de Lucía Carballal

This article examines the central role played by generational conflicts in the theatre of contemporary Spanish playwright Lucía Carballal by analysing four of her works –Una vida americana, Las bárbaras, La fortaleza and Los nuestros– from a sociocultural and gendered perspective. These generational frictions, which embody different ways of positioning oneself in relation to inherited narratives and established frameworks of expectation, not only structure the dramatic action and bring together a set of recurrent motifs that enable a comparative reading of the plays, but also shape several strategies of audience engagement and ensure the plurality of perspectives within the texts. Taken together, the article highlights Carballal’s thematic coherence and self-awareness, as well as her ability to propose an integrative understanding of her characters and their contradictions within a present marked by debates on cultural, affective, and identity transformations and the search for self-narration.