Culture

“Barcelona and Catalan literature will be the main focus” at the Warsaw Book Fair 2016, stated the Director of Institut Ramon Llull (IRL), which is a public institution in charge of promoting Catalan culture and language, Àlex Susanna. Next year it will be time to “set the coveted invitation” to the Bologna Book Fair, he added and declared that IRL is “working hard” on a possible “Catalan landing” in the multidisciplinary Edinburgh Festival in two years’ time. Susanna admitted to be optimistic regarding Catalan culture’s international projection and highlighted that this development coincided with the economic crisis.   

Barcelona’s International Art Fair, ‘Swab’ aims to make the contemporary art scene more accessible to the general public and this year it had a new focus on African and Caribbean artwork. A record number of 65 galleries from 22 countries around the world took part in the 2015 edition of the event and over 200 emerging artists will present their work. In addition to the overall programme, the 2015 edition of the art fair sees the opening of “Swab Gate” from the Fundació Lluís Coromina, which consists of individual presentations from African and Caribbean artists with a focus on painting.

The 47^th International Jazz Festival in Barcelona has organised a public celebration called ‘Jazz and Food’ this Saturday, the 3^rd of October, at ‘Parc del Centre’ in Poble Nou neighbourhood. There will be 12 hours of free music programmed for the event and a wide range of food trucks selling international street food. The party in the park is part of a new programme which was proposed on the 40^th anniversary of the festival. “It was an idea we pursued for years and now it is a reality. We have found the formula,” stated president of The Project, Tito Ramoneda, who recalled that the park has a special symbolism for the festival and said that he wants to continue celebrating the festival’s opening there. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people are expected to attend the event. 

‘Nabucco’, one of Verdi's most famous works, returns to Barcelona on the 7^th of October, 31 years after its last dramatised performance at the Liceu Barcelona Opera House. The opera will be conducted by Daniel Oren and stage directed by Daniele Abaddo. Baritone, Ambrogio Maestri will play the protagonist role, king of the Babylonians, and soprano Martina Serafin will play the lead female role of Abigaille. The play is a co-production between the Liceu, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (where the opera premiered), the Covent Garden Royal Opera House in London and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Barcelona Gallery Weekend will hold its first edition from the 1^st to the 4^th of October offering a vast opportunity for visitors to get to know international artists and their work in Catalonia’s capital city. The programme offers four routes in forty different selected urban areas including galleries, institutions and unusual spaces, as well as other cultural, intellectual and social activities. The project, promoted by the Barcelona Art Association, aims to show the artistic potential of the city and place it among the international benchmarks in the sector by collaborating with some of the most important art institutions in Barcelona such as the Joan Miró Foundation, the Fundació Suñol, MACBA, the MNAC, the Picasso Museum and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe.

Over 28,000 people visited the 5th edition of Barcelona DeGusta from Thursday to Sunday this September at the Fira de Barcelona, Barcelona’s trade fair institution. The popular food show where visitors can discover and taste new products and learn how great chefs work has returned to Barcelona after a 4-year break. This year it coincided with the main feast of Barcelona's patron saint, 'La Merce', and will continue to do so as the organisers of the event stated that this contributed to the event's success. More than 90 activities were scheduled to be attended by 27 chefs with a total of 10 Michelin stars, including Joan Roca, Carme Ruscalleda, Nandu Jubany, the Torres brothers and Carles Abellán.

Mari Chordà, Eulàlia Grau and Joan Rabascall pieces can be seen these days in London’s Tate Modern exhibition ‘The World Goes Pop’. Their works are being presented together with sculptures, paintings and videos of the most well-known Pop Art artists internationally. In total, more than 160 artworks from the 60s and 70s showing the history of this artistic movement and exploring the different cultures that contributed to it are on display. Topics range from politics and the human body to public protests, consumerism and domestic revolutions. The exhibition tries to break the myths about Pop Art, traditionally linked to the United States and the work of Andy Warhol, and presents artworks made in Latin America and European countries such as Croatia and Austria.

The classic from Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky will open the season at Barcelona’s Liceu Opera House from the 16^th to the 20^th of September.English National Ballet Art director Tamara Rojo will be one of the main dancers playing both white and black swan roles and the piece will be accompanied by Liceu’s Symphonic Orchestra. The season’s programme is completed by other iconic pieces such as 'Nabucco', 'Simon Boccanegra' and 'La bohème', amongst many others. In order to bring the programme to a greater audience, especially people at social risk, Liceu has joined the ‘Apropa Cultura’ (‘Bring the culture closer’) initiative, which will offer more than 2,600 tickets at a maximum price of 3 euros each.  

Most of the plays and performances that make up the FiraTàrrega’s programme for 2015 are open air performances, some 80% in fact. From Thursday until the 13^th of September, more than 50 art companies from all over the world will take part in one of the most important theatre festivals in Catalonia. Moreover, 30 of the shows at FiraTàrrega will be premieres. 250 performances held in 25 different venues, mainly outdoors, will turn this small town in the east of Catalonia into a big creative hub with more than 150,000 visitors expected. For the first time this year, three different shows from international companies will be performed on opening day.  

‘Barcelona Catalonia Culture Week’ will export the Catalan culture to Shanghai between the 1^st and the 8^th of November. Traditional human towers, ‘Castellers’, will be displayed all around the city and a 3D exhibition on Antoni Gaudí’s architecture and a retrospective of Salvador Dalí’s surrealist art will be amongst the main attractions. Live music, gastronomic exhibitions and many more happenings will complete the programme, composed of 30 events. President of the Catalan Society in Shanghai, Alexis Roig, stated that the week will allow the projecting of Catalonia and Barcelona as “innovative places” to the Chinese audience. Half a million are expected to attend ‘Barcelona Catalonia Culture Week’ and all activities will be “open and for free”, said Roig.

The collaboration will bring to Catalonia some of the masterpieces of the great civilisations that are currently on display in the British Museum. Most of them are pieces that are rarely loaned to other museums and that will be seen in Spain for the first time ever. The four projects will focus on Medieval Europe, Ancient Greece, the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Phoenicians. Between 2016 and 2020, the exhibitions will be displayed in Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona, Lleida, Palma and three other ‘CaixaForum’, the centres that normally host the exhibitions promoted and organised by ‘La Caixa’ Bank Foundation. The Bank Foundation of ‘La Caixa’, which is the biggest bank in Catalonia, is the section of the bank that focuses on welfare projects committed to society, education, science, the arts and culture.

A total of 110 productions, 36 premieres and 25 international performances make up the numbers of this year’s Temporada Alta Theatre Festival in Girona. The performing arts festival will celebrate its 24th edition between the 2nd of October and the 8th of December by presenting one of the most ambitious, international and diverse programme ever. The opening performance will offer audience the opportunity to experience life in the Middle Ages. The Barri Vell of Girona, its old Quarter, will be transformed in a performance in which fire, but not firecrackers, will be prevalent. The idea is to experience Girona as it was before it had electricity, using totally freestyle itineraries.

The Catalan Film Archive presents this September a season celebrating the career of acclaimed Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, born 100 years ago this year. The ‘Ingrid Bergman Centenary’ will include the projection of 17 of her films, including some from her first years in the acting business in her native Sweden, the successful ‘Casablanca’ and her last movie, also Swedish, ‘Höstsonaten’. Remembered as one of the great stars of Hollywood, Bergman once said that she never “sought success in order to get fame and money”. “It’s the talent and the passion that count in success”, the leading actress from Casablanca added.

Barcelona's Contemporary Art Museum (MACBA) is entering a new period, under the leadership of Ferran Barenblit, born in Buenos Aires in 1968. The international competition opened to choose MACBA's new director has resulted in the hiring of Barenblit, who until the present day was Director of Madrid's CA2M Art Centre. Previously, the Argentinean manager had been Director of Barcelona’s Santa Mónica Art Centre (from 2003 to 2008). The MACBA opened a public competition in March, after the previous Director, Bartomeu Marí, resigned in the wake of the great controversy surrounding the last-minute cancellation of a temporary exhibition because one of the sculptures depicted the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, being sodomised by a dog. The sculpture had been designed by the Austrian artist Ines Doujak. Marí decided to cancel the opening, provoking loud protests from curators and a significant public controversy, with accusations of censorship being aimed at the director.

For the last few weeks, the word 'Cruïlla' has been monopolising conversations with my friends. This started to happen since we decided to go to Cruïlla Festival 2015, a relatively young Barcelona music festival taking place from the 10^th to the 12^th of July at Parc del Fòrum (an enormous setup on the seafront). As we are all foreigners not yet proficient in this country's language, for us the word 'Cruïlla' became like a mantra: we kept repeating it, ignoring the fact that it had real meaning by itself. We later found out that it is a Catalan term for 'crossroads'. Indeed, this music event is conceived as a real place of encounter not just among artists coming from all over the world (45 in total this year), but especially among people coming to enjoy the music (46,000 overall). As performances vary greatly in style, very different crowds intermingle, providing the event with a pleasantly eclectic flavour and a tolerant soul.