As desterradas

A letter from Queen Joan of Castile arrives at the monastery of Albeos, located between the fortresses of Melgaço in Portugal and Fornelos in Galicia. The small community of nuns is shaken by a sentence that, apparently, is already unappealable and, scene by scene, is discovering the tragedy that these nuns are living. "As desterradas" delves into the confrontation unleashed between the Crown of Castile and the Galician Benedictine monasteries in the 15th and 16th centuries. A story of resistance starring a small group of nuns who maintained a brave and unequal struggle with the great powers of their time: the crown and the papacy. The piece recreates those final days in the monastery of Albeos, of which no documentation has reached us because, as Father Colombás left said, the documents are understandably scarce because no one has an interest in preserving embarrassing papers or parchments. Gone are the days when the abbots of San Bieito de Valladolid bitterly complained about the support of the Roman curia to the Galician nuns: "every hour they tell us that they must destroy us like the Templars, and even for such and worse they have us. Holy Father, the Pope never calls us but heretics".