SOURCE: Rodriguez, Alfonso. “Tragic Vision in Estella Portillo's The Day of the Swallows.” De Colores 5, nos. 1-2 (1980): 152-58.

In the following essay, Rodriguez discusses The Day of the Swallows as a tragic play.

The literature on tragedy as an aesthetic form is very extensive. And although critics do not agree on which works are classifiable as tragedies, there seems to be a general consensus over those elements which reveal a sense of the tragic in a given work of art. Our comments are based on the assumption that there is a confluence of qualities which render a vision of the tragic in The Day of the Swallows (1969), a drama in three acts by Estella Portillo. Our intent is not to classify the play, for in order to do that adequately, we would have to test the play's impact on the readers (or the audience) with respect to the...