| Sumario: | This article examines Carmen Martín Gaite's adaptation of Gil Vicente's Tragicomedia de Don Duardos (c. 1522), produced in 1978 by the Centro Nacional de Iniciación del Niño y el Adolescente al Teatro (CNINAT). The CNINAT was a branch of the Dirección General de Teatro y Espectáculos and the Ministerio de Cultura. Despite only four years of activity after it was created during the Spanish Transition, the CNINAT had a considerable impact on cultural policies geared toward children's education, especially through the performing arts. Founded by stage director José María Morera, the Center became a civic engagement initiative committed to promoting theater as an experiential tool for the new generation coming of age during complex political change in their most vulnerable, formative years. Within this context, Martín Gaite's adaptation of Don Duardos represents a paradigmatic experiment for two reasons. On the one hand, the adaptation emphasizes the novelist's prolonged commitment to developing and nurturing socially engaged children's literature. On the other, it exemplifies how it was possible to recast early modern Peninsular theater as a progressive, inclusive cultural legacy that guided young audiences to new values and ideals that gradually took hold during the Transition.
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