Barcelona City Council expropriates the Antic Teatre building to convert it into a public cultural facility.

BarcelonaThe Antic Teatre had been demanding a solution for years, knowing that the venue's owner wanted to increase the rent by 500% when their contract expired in January 2027. Finally, Barcelona City Council took a step forward and, this Monday, its governing committee approved the funding for Calle Ver, Calle 1, Calle Pere, Calle Santa Caterina, and Calle Ribera. With an investment of €1,064,281.70, the City Council will incorporate this space as a new cultural facility under municipal ownership.

operation responds to a clear desire to protect local cultural activity and reaffirms the institutional commitment to the culture rooted in the territory," he continues. The building has six floors, but the council will only expropriate those spaces that host cultural activity: the main floor, the mezzanine, the courtyard and the lower access building. According to sources from the council, the intention is to preserve the current activity, as was done when the city council acquired the Tantarantana building. However, the final formula for awarding its management in the territory has not yet been decided. There are a dozen projects in Barcelona that have been carried out without a public tender; simply, an agreement has been signed, as was the case with Tantarantana", explains Tomic.

Tomic defends that all the arguments that the council has made to carry out the expropriation are their project: "We have achieved it after ten years of struggle. When we arrived at the building, it was a rat's den and we carried out a comprehensive renovation," she adds. The current director of the Antic Teatre admits that the relationship with the current council "is not very fluid" and that they had not communicated to her the agreement on the expropriation: "We should have an agreement and become a cultural center.

In a statement, the current managers of the Antic Teatre regret that the city council did not mention them in its announcement: "We are concerned that the official statement does not highlight the fundamental role that the Antic Teatre has played and continues to play in consolidating this space as a cultural landmark. It is this project—initiated, managed, and sustained by a team of workers and collaborators in the cultural sector—that has turned this place into an active creative center, recognized and beloved by the artistic and neighborhood community, not an empty infrastructure that will now be filled with content. The risk, therefore, is that the space will become disconnected from the project that gives it meaning." In this sense, they demand "explicit" recognition of the political and cultural struggle that the Antic Teatre has carried out for more than twenty years to preserve this space, and ask that the Antic Teatre be linked to the definition of the future of the space.

The Antic Teatre had been on a war footing for over two years to avoid closure. It's located in a highly coveted area, where real estate speculation has wreaked havoc. The city's residents came to learn, but also to host leisure and cultural activities. At the end of the 20th century, the space was abandoned, and in 2003 it was reclaimed to become the Antic Teatre. Semolinika Tomic, He received the FAD Sebastià Gasch Award in 2004, which is given to recognize the most outstanding contribution of the year to individuals who offer different and innovative perspectives in the world of entertainment. The award given to Semolinika was "for the resurrection of the Antic Teatre, which has transformed itself from an abandoned civic center into a living stage for contemporary creation."