Episode 18. The Tablada Sanatorium: Lorca’s Reckoning

 

If someone hurt a person you loved, how long would you be willing to wait to make them pay?

In today’s story, guest actress Khephra C. White introduces us to a nurse named Helena. She toys with her favorite golden brooch with red rubies while she waits at a lonely hospital.

When a new patient named Alfredo arrives, he tries to take her piece of jewelry.

The voices inside the brooch take them both back to Granada in 1936, where they meet the poet Federico García Lorca just as Civil War breaks out in Spain.

It turns out that Helena and Alfredo go way back.

Way, way back.

And Alfredo might want her brooch…but Helena wants her revenge even more.

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1-Don’t forget to vote Spanish Sundown for the Audience Choice Award in the UK International Audio Drama Festival! This kind of recognition would help to put the show on the map and make it last. So, if you’d like to show appreciation for my work, Spanish Sundown stands a real chance of winning and voting only takes a second. I’d be so grateful! Voting form available here.

2-Khephra C. White cowrote this episode and voiced Helena, Carla and narration. Check out her IG account to see her work as writer, actress and comedian (she’s hilarious—if you’re in Madrid, go see her shows): @darqueroast

3-See the location of the abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium here. If you are able to visit in person, swing by the restaurant with the chimney smoke on the other side of the lonely trucker highway—it feels like the only inhabited building in the otherwise abandoned town.

4-Read Federico García Lorca’s biography here, read a bit of his poetry here, and read some of his plays here (they’re all good, but Blood Wedding/Bodas de sangre is one of my personal favorites).

5-Check out Spanish Sundown’s webpage or our Facebook and Instagram accounts for footage of Khephra and me while recording and doing on-site research at the sanatorium. Drop by and leave a comment—hearing from you makes my day!

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© 2025 Samuel Mattern. All rights reserved.

Research and on-site recording at the sanatorium and surrounding area. Photo of Federico García Lorca in 1914.

Look, where Alfredo scratched the door after his wreck!

 
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Episode 17. Processionaries: The Rash