‘The Alcala text of 1799-1803, appearing to relate this work to Plate 69, Sopla (‘It is blowing’), reads: ‘Procuresses (or pimps) having a night conference to discuss the means of carrying these creatures (young boys) in their belts (or girdles)’. There is perhaps more significance to this print than first appears. Light, in this case ‘dawn’, was the most fundamental symbol of the ‘Spirit of Enlightenment’, a symbol which Goya used as a tool for many of his Caprichos etchings. Pérez Sanchez, in his introduction to Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment expressed his feeling that this particular etching was ‘an emblem and summary of the artist's beliefs’. For Pérez Sanchez: ‘...Dawn - that is, the clarity of the sun, the triumph of reborn light- banishes the spirits, witches, and hobgoblins, whose domains are darkness and night. That dawn was the luminous splendor of science, of knowledge, of revealed and triumphant truth.’ This ‘truth’, expressed through light, was to follow the horrors of the night, symbolic of the previous decades in the history of Spain.’

Johnson, R. S., Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, R.S. Johnson Fine Art, Chicago, 1992, p. 168.