Culture

Temporada Alta, the renowned performing arts festival that takes place in Girona, reached this year its 25th birthday. After a quarter of century, the director of the event, Salvador Sunyer, took stock of its history in an interview with the CNA. Girona’s festival is noted for acting as the gateway to Spain, and often to Europe, for many international productions. Polish theatre director Krystian Lupa and British director Peter Brook were some of the big international names that could be seen at the festival this time out. In this vein, Sunyer stated thatencouraging work between companies and directors from Catalonia and international teams is one of the festival’s aims and long-term ambitions. A clear example of this wish is ‘Davant la Jubilació’ (‘Eve of Retirement’), in which Polish theatre director Lupa directs Catalan actors. This spectacle, and ten more, will tour internationally and 2016 is, indeed, the year in which many shows are having a longer trajectory after being released at the event.

Barcelona City Council will allocate almost €4.5 million for the maintenance, restoration and enhancement of the architectural heritage of Antoni Gaudí’s famous Park Güell and its surroundings. This investment comes from the fee charged to enter the park, but also partly from the city tourist tax, Barcelona Councillor for Architecture Daniel Mòdol stated. Since October 2013, tourists visiting the spot have had to pay an entrance fee. The Councillor of Gràcia District in Barcelona, Eloi Badia, explained that the remodelling aims at controlling the influx of visitors and recovering the daily life of the neighbourhood as well as the cultural and commercial activity of the area. According to Badia, many neighbours believe that they have to pay to enter the enclosure, but locals are not charged. “We want neighbours to understand that they can access [the park] for free, and we want to recover the cultural and daily activities”, he stressed.

The film ‘Lluvia en los Zapatos’ (‘Rain in the shoes’) by the Catalan director Maria Ripoll, will officially inaugurate the REC International Film Festival in Tarragona (southern Catalonia) this Thursday. In its sixteenth and most international edition yet, the REC International Film Festival seeks not only to introduce “new voices and talents” to the Catalan audience, but also to project Tarragona outward “as a generator of content”, the director of the event, Xavier Garcia Puerto said. From this Thursday and until the 6^th of December the Festival will screen some twenty films from eleven different countries, five of which are premieres in Spain and eleven in Catalonia. 

The Catalan literary corpus has recently incorporated a new addition: ‘Il Canzoniere’ (‘Songbook’) by Francesco Petrarca. This masterpiece by the poet from Tuscany was translated into Catalan intermittently during 20 years by the Catalan poet Miquel Desclot. Desclot began working on the volume in 1994, following the path of the Catalan poet Osbald Cardona, who attempted an incomplete translation in the 50s, and his work has now come to fruition. According to Desclot, the last stage of the translation process was “insane” and kept him fully occupied for the last two years. The Petrarch masterpiece has 366 poems and a total of 7,785 verses, which now can be enjoyed by Catalan readers in their own language, thanks to Desclot and the edition released by the Catalan publisher Proa.  

Picasso’s attraction to Romanesque art is to be definitively unveiled in an exhibition dedicated to him at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). The display will open its doors next Thursday and is co-organised with the Musée National Picasso-Paris. The exhibition includes forty works by the artist lent by the French museum, which are being added to the collection of Romanesque art from the MNAC. According to one of the exhibition’s curators, Emilia Philippot, the display demonstrates the “echoes of simplicity and primitivism” of Romanesque art in certain Picasso creations. Picasso, like other artists of his time, was attracted by the Romanesque, identified with the “childhood of art”. His interest is proved in the exhibition with various unpublished documents, such as correspondence and books belonging to the artist.

The 155 pictures that won the last ‘World Press Photo’ contest – the main photojournalism event at international level - will be on show at the Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture (CCCB). The Photographic Social Vision foundation, which is in charge of the creation, production and promotion of photojournalism and documentaries, launched this week the 12^th edition of the ‘World Press Photo’ exhibition in Barcelona, which will run until the 11^th of December. The images presented to the public were taken in 2015 throughout the world and won the prestigious international photojournalism award. In this year’s edition, visitors can see the photos of the awarded Spanish photographers Daniel Ochoa de Olza, Sebastián Liste, José Bautista and Mikel Aristregi. 

The exhibition ‘Ramon Llull and the encounter of cultures’ landed on Wednesday at the Espai Catalunya Europa in Brussels and will remain open until January. This itinerant exhibition of the IEMed – the European Institute of the Mediterranean – is part of the events organised in commemoration of the 700^th anniversary of the death of Ramon Llull. The aim of the exhibition is to “explain a little more about what was the world of Ramon Llull” and the role he played “in establishing a dialogue between cultures, civilisations and different religions”, the Executive President of IEMed, Senén Florensa, told the Catalan News Agency. The exhibition has already visited Tarragona, in southern Catalonia; Vic, in central Catalonia; Valencia; and Barcelona. 

From this Friday the 29^th of October to the 5^th of February 2017, the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, is holding the exhibition ‘Surrealism in Catalonia. The artists of Empordà and Salvador Dalí’. The exhibition presents 70 works by 29 different Catalan artists from private collections or loaned by museums such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Cau Ferrat in Sitges, De l’Empordà, in Figueres and Art in Cadaqués, one of the Costa Brava’s most iconic villages. The goal of the exhibition is to mark the importance of the surrealist art movement in Catalonia, mainly cultivated in Empordà – northern Catalonia - in the history of European Surrealism. Amongst the 70 pieces displayed in the exhibition there are paintings, but also works of sculpture and graphic art, such as the masterpiece by Dalí ‘Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening’.

Theatres, museums and other cultural amenities from all over Catalonia will celebrate the second edition of 'Apropa Cultura' Week from this Monday the 24^th to the 30^th of October. The 63 cultural amenities that are taking part in this initiative will programme a wide range of activities to make people aware of the importance of democratic access to culture. 1,573 social organisations will hold meetings between social groups and artists during more than 200 cultural events throughout the week. 'Apropa Cultura' is a pioneer initiative in Europe aiming at opening culture to citizens at social risk, such as people with intellectual and physical disabilities and people with drug addiction problems, amongst others.

From the 20th to the 27th of October Cambridge will host the 36th edition of its well-known film festival and Catalan cinema will again have its own place in the programme. For the fifth time the event features ‘Camera Catalonia’, the most important fair in the UK focused on Catalan film. This year’s edition includes two of the most successful box office comedies in recent years: ‘Barcelona Summer Night’ and the sequel ‘Barcelona Christmas Night’, by young director Dani de la Orden. There are two other premieres, the documentary about Xavier Cugat, a Catalan musician during the golden years of Hollywood who became one of the originators of the Latin sound, ‘Sex, Maracas & Chihuahuas’and ‘The Virus of Fear’ by renowned Catalan film director Ventura Pons.“Everybody appreciates that cinema is one of best presentation letters to the world and that it is a perfect way of making us known to the world”, ‘Camera Catalonia’s curator, Ramon Lamarca, told the CNA.

The pieces are an equestrian sculpture of Franco, the head of which was pulled off in an act of vandalism a couple of years ago, and ‘Victoria’, by sculptor Frederic Marés. After many years of being kept in a Barcelona City Hall warehouse the Francoist sculptures were erected this Monday on the esplanade before the ‘El Born’ Cultural Centre, in Barcelona’s historic centre, amid criticism from citizens and political parties. Indeed, several people booed the workers while they erected the sculptures this morning and threw eggs at them. According to Barcelona’s deputy mayor, Gerardo Pisarello, the exhibition ‘Franco-Victory-Republic: impunity and urban space’ aims to “force society to think about what Franco’s dictatorship represented” and the “impunity” this period has had “during Spain’s democracy”. 

24 photographs from Miquel Ruiz, a Catalan photographer, are being displayed at an exhibition in Sarajevo, which kicked off on Thursday. The picture of the Library of Sarajevo destroyed by Serb artillery during the siege of the Bosnian capital is one of the masterpieces of the exposition ‘We don’t forget’, which takes place precisely in the same monumental building which appears in ruins in the image and which was restored in 2014. The Catalan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva, stated during his visit to the exhibition that it recalls that “Catalonia has always been with Sarajevo and Bosnia, even when the EU turned its back on them”. Romeva added that the images call us “to persevere in the construction of peace".

‘Brick lane’, in East London, is the venue of the first edition of the international contemporary art fair ‘Crossroads’, taking place until the 9^th of October. The event features some fifty galleries from 15 different countries: Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Colombia, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, the UAE, the USA and the UK. The Catalan participation, though, is one of the most relevant as it accounts for 20% of the total number of participants. In total, 10 Catalan galleries, most of them from Barcelona but also from other spots, are displaying their contemporary art pieces. The participation of the Catalan galleries has been facilitated by the Art Barcelona association, who for third time has brought together a representation of Catalonia’s galleries, with financial support from the Ministry of Culture. Already in 2014 eight Catalan galleries took part at ArtRío in Brazil and twelve attended ArtInternational Istanbul.

Over 50 speakers from all around the globe are to attend this week the Second World Gaudí Congress. From the 4th to the 7th of October the Historic Building of the University of Barcelona is hosting this biennial event organised by the Gaudí Research Institute (TGRI) and the University of Barcelona, ??where Antoni Gaudí received the title of architect in 1878. One of the main attractions of the congress is the thesis that the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of the Church of Sant Joan de Gràcia, in Barcelona, is a work by Gaudí, an idea defended by the biographer of the Catalan architect, Josep Maria Tarragona. This second edition has as a novelty the incorporation of the three-day session in Shanghai, which took place between the 21st and the 23rd of June, in collaboration with several Chinese universities of Tsinghua and with the support of the City of Shanghai. 

Impressive aerial shots showing the riot of colour on display at the 26^th edition of the Castells Competition in Tarragona, southern Catalonia, have travelled around the world. Media outlets such as the BBC, Russia Today and The Los Angeles Times published videos, pictures and articles on the contest. Catalonia’s ‘human tower’ competition, ‘Concurs de Castells’, took place at Tarraco Arena Place, an old bullring, attracting 20,000 spectators and 32 teams. The biennial event saw one group, ‘Els castellers de Vilafranca’, secure its eighth title on the trot. However, one of the most applauded performances was that of the Chinese team ‘Els Xiquets de Hangzhou’, the first ever international team to compete at the contest. Around 380 professionals from 120 different media outlets covered the event on Saturday and Sunday.