In spite of the Franco regime censorship the evolutionary process of peninsular Spanish art and culture did not stop completely. A renewal movement took place during the 40¿s and 50¿s, and playwrights Antonio Buero Vallejo, Alfonso Sastre and Fernando Arrabal stood prominently in it. The case of Arrabal, premiered outside the Spanish borders and in French, is a perfect example of how Spanish literature kept its liveliness, even in exile. «Historia de una escalera», «Escuadra hacia la muerte», and «El cementerio de automoviles» also share the fact of being tragedies, a very uncommon characteristic in Spanish theatre, specially when comedy ruled as a way of escaping the dramatic socio-political reality. The renewed and open-minded theatrical context that emerged in the stifled climate of the Franco Spain of the 40¿s is noticeably present in these plays. Sastre, as well as Arrabal and Buero Vallejo were imprisoned by the regime, and these plays reflect their respective biographical projections. This volume gathers these authors¿ different styles and playwriting ¿very often clashing¿ whose common constant is the linking of the Spanish theatre with the international drama tendencies. Along his introduction professor Victor Fuentes develops a schematic analysis of the Buero Vallejo, Sastre and Arrabal achievements through drama experimentation in their respective plays. With this edition we offer the US reader three fundamental plays of the literary, cultural and theatrical Spanish ¿and universal¿ memory of more than half a century ago, whilst proposing the deciphering of their present meanings and projections into the future.