THE SENSATIONAL SAGA OF MALINCHE THE MUSICAL

Now in Mexico City, this Madrid-born musical is ambitious, controversial—and eyeing a U.S. outpost

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The baptism of the title character in the musical Malinche. Photo: Courtesy of the production

One of the most successful Latin pop stars in history—arrested! Accusations of political favoritism! Sponsorship pullouts! Alleged employment improprieties! A rewrite spurred by conservative backlash! A pricey proposal to erect a 30-meter Aztec pyramid on the outskirts of Madrid!

The story of the Spanish musical Malinche is sensational on a scale that approaches Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. And that’s even before we get to the controversies around the subject of the musical itself, which retells the story of La Malinche, the enslaved Nahua woman who served as the local translator and advisor to the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés during his push into what is now Mexico in the early 16th century.

Created, written, composed, and directed by the Spanish musician Nacho Cano, the musical presents Malinche’s story as a celebration of female empowerment and cultural blending, complete with showstopping flamenco sequences, pyrotechnics and a water feature. But in Spain, where Malinche ran in Madrid for two and a half years—and where it would still be running now, if the production hadn’t been evicted in March to make way for a Formula 1 racetrack—Malinche faced criticism for romanticizing colonialism and eliding the horrors of conquest.

And with the musical’s new Mexico City production, which opened March 28, the show is now playing in a nation in the midst of an ongoing diplomatic standoff over the Mexican president’s unanswered demand for a formal apology from Spain over the human rights abuses of the conquest. It’s a country where the figure of La Malinche was the inspiration for the word “malinchista,” a noun primarily used in Mexico and Latin America to refer to someone who prefers foreign culture, ideas, people, and products—a word that is sometimes translated simply as “traitor.”

None of that has put a damper on the show’s grand ambitions—which include an expansion to the U.S. “What we want to do is go to Vegas,” the musical’s producer, David Hatchwell, tells me.

It’s been a wild ride for the show—and a ride that’s far from over. In this SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll highlight:

• the successes of Nacho Cano, both as a member of the 80s band Mecano and as the creator of what is generally acknowledged as the most successful Spanish musical in history,

• the eccentric and expensive development process of Malinche, including stops in Ibiza, Mexico, and Brooklyn,

• the critical reception to the show and how response divides along political lines,

• a complete timeline of all the controversies, reversals, and backlashes,

• insight from the musical’s producer about the expansive production model, including a bustling food and beverage element, and

• what’s next for this big, ambitious, contentious musical, and why Las Vegas looks like the logical next stop.

AN AMERICAN’S ANECDOTAL ANALYSIS

I got a chance to see Malinche during my last trip to Madrid, and I was certainly struck by its rosy view of the conquest. Cortés is presented as something of feckless fop, and the first act spends enough time focused on him that I started to wonder whether the show should be called Hernán. Our heroine—also known by her Christian name Marina, its Nahua derivative Malintzin, or the name believed to be given to her at birth, Malinalli—accepts the hardships of slavery and her baptism into Catholicism with surprising equanimity. By the show’s end, the emperor of the Aztecs himself, Moctezuma, has found God—the Catholic one—and goes to Heaven.

It’s an elaborate production with a sizable cast and a set that shifts from ship’s deck to jungle floor to Aztec pyramid. It also boasts standout choreography by Jesús Carmona, who melds flamenco with hip-hop, urban dance, and other contemporary elements in a way that made me eager to see more flamenco on musical theater stages.

In Madrid many of the local musicals cluster around the Gran Via, which in the last decade has become the city’s equivalent of Broadway. Malinche, however, carved out its run in a big tent at IFEMA Madrid, a campus of convention venues on the outskirts of town. Inside that tent was not only a 1,066-seat theater but a large concessions space with an array of bars and food counters serving tacos, tequila, and other Mexican-inflected cuisine. It’s an extensive food and beverage element intended to help turn the show’s out-of-the-way locale into a true destination—and the night I saw the show, it seemed to be working: Those bars and food stalls did lively business all evening.

The Mexican production—at Frontón México, a former jai alai court converted into a casino and performance venue—has an even larger scale than the Madrid version, with two more onstage pools, a bigger cast (now 80, compared to 50+ in Spain), a larger stage, and an auditorium that seats 1,229. It also incorporates an F&B set-up similar to the one in Madrid; so will any future stagings.

“In Madrid we started by offering something very affordable in that space, and then we started to offer a little bit of a VIP experience as well. Then we brought Mexican bands and other elements,” Hatchwell says. “We’ve made it more of a 360 experience.”

IF YOU DON’T KNOW NACHO

Hatchwell produces Malinche alongside the show’s multi-hyphenate auteur, Nacho Cano. Many readers will know Cano already: He’s one of the biggest names in Latin music.

With his brother José María Cano and the singer Ana Torroja, Cano was one of the three members of Mecano, the ultra-popular 1980s band frequently described as “iconic.” In 1982, their self-titled debut album sold one million copies in Spain alone, and the band went on to hit the peak of its international popularity with the albums Descanso Dominical (1988) and Aidalai (1991). By 1993 the trio had broken up acrimoniously and have stayed that way ever since, barring a brief comeback in 1998.

Their songs, however, are part of the 80s canon in Spain and much of Latin America. By 2023, the band has sold more than 30 million records and racked up 100 million streams.

In the early aughts, the worldwide success of “Mamma Mia!” inspired Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar (Today I Can’t Get Up), a jukebox musical of 30+ Mecano hits that opened in Madrid in 2005. Sharing a title with the band’s first breakout single, the musical—co-conceived and directed by Cano—follows two musicians in Madrid in the 1980s during the rise of the countercultural movement known as the Movida Madrileña.

The show is widely considered the most successful Spanish musical in history. A year after it first opened in Madrid, a second production bowed in Mexico City. By 2011, Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar had sold 2.5 million tickets across sit-down productions and tours in Spain and Mexico; it’s since been revived in Madrid (2013) and in Mexico City, twice (2017 and 2019).

Cano’s second musical, A—his first with songs composed specifically for the theater—tells a magic-infused story about a boy with extraordinary talents. It played runs in Madrid (2009) and Barcelona (2010), but proved much less enduring than Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar.

Cano eventually split with his collaborators and producers on his first two musicals, which is when Hatchwell, a businessman and philanthropist, stepped in to partner on Cano’s next musical: Malinche.