Rabat — A new volume published in Spain is giving Spanish-speaking readers their first direct encounter with the work of Moroccan playwright Zoubir Ben Bouchta, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Moroccan theatre.
The book, issued by the Spanish Association of Theatre Directors, brings together two of Ben Bouchta’s plays in Spanish translation by Latifa Lamarti, with a foreword written by Spanish playwright Albert Tola. The project was produced in partnership with the Riad Sultan theatre in Tangier, a stage long associated with the city’s cultural life.
The two texts chosen for the collection are « Pies Blancos » (« White Feet » in its original title) and « El hombre del pan desnudo, » a title that directly echoes the literary universe of Mohamed Choukri, the Moroccan writer best known internationally for « For Bread Alone. »
« White Feet » unfolds around an encounter between two characters inside a warehouse at the port of Tangier, using that confined setting to explore the human cost of Mediterranean migration — a subject that remains acutely present on both shores of the Strait of Gibraltar. The second play takes a more introspective turn, staging what amounts to an inner confrontation between ideas and the self, in direct dialogue with Choukri’s literary legacy.
Ben Bouchta has spent decades drawing on Tangier’s urban memory and oral storytelling traditions to build a body of work that is at once deeply local and widely resonant. Often working through spare, demanding stage forms, he has already built a reputation on the international festival circuit, but this Spanish-language publication marks a further step in extending his reach beyond Arabic-speaking audiences.
By translating these two plays into Spanish, the Spanish Association of Theatre Directors is opening a window onto a contemplative, Tangier-rooted theatre for Iberian audiences — one whose themes of exile, memory and identity travel well beyond the city that inspired them. The choice of these particular plays is hardly incidental: both draw on the geographic and cultural closeness between Morocco and Spain, two countries separated by a narrow strip of sea but bound by a long, complicated shared history.
The publication also reflects a broader pattern of cultural exchange building between the two countries, as artistic cooperation between Rabat and Madrid expands across several fields. For Moroccan theatre, it is another opportunity to carry its voice beyond national borders — and to let Tangier’s layered identity speak, this time, in Castilian.