Francisco Martínez Allende (Cangas de Onís, Oviedo, Spain; 1906 – Buenos Aires, Argentina; August 25, 1954) was a Spanish actor, theater director, and playwright who became a naturalized Argentine citizen.
He was one of the Spanish theater figures whose careers were eclipsed by exile after the Spanish Civil War.
At the age of fifteen, he emigrated to Buenos Aires, where he studied and began his theatrical career as an actor and writer, eventually meeting Federico García Lorca.
In Spain, he directed the Tribuna Theater and was in charge of theatrical groups for the Republican Army.
After the fall of the Second Spanish Republic, he went into exile in Cuba and later returned to Argentina, where he worked in theater and film until his death.
In the mid nineteenth century, flamenco singing and dancing bring together their most loyal fans in a tablao in Andalusia where Rosarillo, an attractive singer unleashes the passions of his audience. On her wedding night, while the gypsy sings from deep emotion of her heart, her husband is murdered. Her feelings will be truncated at once, and in front of all those present, she swears revenge.
The protagonist commits a crime and abandons his brother, on whom the shadow of suspicion falls, to avoid punishment. In his escape he meets for the first time the emotion of a true love, but fatality takes it upon himself, pushing him back onto the criminal path.