Jaume Viñas: "I don't understand my grandmother's pain, but she lived it"

BarcelonaTen years ago, a jolt impacted the family of playwright, director, and actor Jaume Viñas (Barcelona, 1987). Following that shake-up, aunts, uncles, siblings, and cousins began to hold a series of family lunches and dinners where, all of a sudden, everyone opened up about things that had previously been kept in the shadows. "My sister and I realized that our two grandmothers had suffered a lot," explains Viñas. That experience sowed the seed for L'albada, the playwright's most ambitious production, which will be performed from June 25 to July 30 at the Biblioteca de Catalunya under the direction of Oriol Broggi and as part of the Grec festival. With around forty characters, the production spans three generations and is a grand family story that delves into the silences, memory, and legacy derived from the Civil War. Viñas prefers not to explain the nature of the family jolt so as not to reveal the play's ending.

The play begins in 1992 and revolves around Alba (Clara Mir), a university student searching for her origins. This search will force her to look back, dive into the bureaucratic labyrinth of the Salamanca Archive, and unearth the experiences of two women—Natàlia (Cristina Arenas / Noël Olivé) and Maruja (Maria Ribera)—who suffered the war firsthand and have tried to forget it. They are the great heroines of the story: Natàlia fought as a militiaman and gave up her youthful dreams to achieve family stability, and Maruja lost the future she longed for due to the conflict. "My grandfather had a secret, and my grandmother knew it. For many years, she carried that pain inside and carried on. I don't understand my grandmother's pain, but she lived it," says Viñas.

Precisely this lack of understanding has been one of the driving forces that led the playwright to write L'albada. "Our grandparents hardly spoke about the war to their children. Our parents haven't spoken to us about it either. In a way, we have all looked the other way. Until it was the grandchildren who went to look for their grandparents and asked them questions, and in many cases they answered. In my case, however, I didn't have that space because my grandmother died before I was born," points out Viñas. Despite the experiential echo that gave him the initial push to write, L'albada is not an autofiction show nor does it reflect the playwright's family history, but rather draws from historical research and also from experiences in two previous productions: Diari d'una miliciana (2015), in which Viñas was part of the cast, and Las trece (2024), which he himself wrote and directed at Dau al Sec. The playwright is also the author of shows such as Un sogre de lloguer (2024, together with Susanna Garachana) and Tot l'any pot ser Nadal (2023) and has done the adaptation of La filla del mar (2021, together with Marc Vilavella).

Unearthing memory

Alba's adventure moves back and forth in time, focusing on three major moments in recent history: the Civil War, Francoism in the 60s, and the Olympics. The action takes place in Barcelona, but also in Girona and Badalona, and jumps from one side of the war to the other to expose the implications, decisions, and betrayals of both. "Society is divided between those who want to look back and those who don't, whether they are right-wing or left-wing. Nor is there a social machinery that has truly set out to unearth memory, and all this means that when someone like Alba wants to find things out, they run into bureaucracy that prevents them from moving forward. The characters are in constant uncertainty, and the fact of not knowing is much more agonizing than reaching the truth," reflects Viñas.

One of the great influences of L'albada, with evident echoes, is Incendis, by Wajdi Mouawad. The Lebanese writer has been a strong reference for Viñas, especially when exploring themes such as family secrets and the impact of wars, but he has tried to find his own voice to tell this story. "I can't write like Wajdi does, who is incredible. I've made my story and told it my way. I first had it structured chronologically, but it didn't work, because memory is not linear. So I decided to mess it up so that it would also enter the spectator in a more emotional way," emphasizes the playwright, who wrote the play in 28 days, in one go. "It was a very intense process, one of the most wonderful I've done. I remember being locked in the room alone in January, unable to stop writing," he explains.

The cherry on top came when Oriol Broggi not only agreed to direct the play, but also agreed to give Viñas a role in the play: he will play Guillermo, a young man who accompanies Alba in her search and who also has an unresolved identity issue. "I really wanted to experience the show from the inside, as an actor. The company has placed extraordinary trust in me — states the playwright—. Suddenly, ten years after all that, to be able to hear the company saying the text is magical.