The Classics Festival travels to the heart of the lie

BarcelonaWill we be able to see the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, the member of parliament Gabriel Rufián, or the former mayor Ada Colau spending the night in a nine-square-meter house equipped with a kitchenette and microwave but without a bathroom or running water? This was the surprising announcement of an exhibition, "sponsored by Ikea," at La Capella in Barcelona, where, according to the photographer and artist Joan Fontcuberta, public figures, even Maricarmen Abascal, would be invited to stay overnight. But you won't see it, because it is all a lie. This Monday, during the press conference for the presentation of the eighth edition of the Festival Clàssics –dedicated this year to the lie—, Fontcuberta, the conceptual godfather of the event, played at setting traps for the journalists from the very first minute to demonstrate the fragility of truth. The lie, therefore, made sense within the theoretical framework of the festival.

"The lie is one of the themes of the present. We are in a time of general discredit, with the feeling that everything happening around us is a deception or has a bad intention behind it, whether through social media or artificial intelligence," explained the philosopher and director of the festival, Sira Abenoza. The lie is a practice as old as it is contradictory. "From this present in which it seems that the lie has been published by an AI, we have decided to go back and turn to Hannah Arendt, who theorized about the modern lie based on photography and the pretension of objectivity of images," adds Abenoza, who on October 13th will publish the essay If Everything Were a Lie (Arcàdia) as a theoretical compass for the cycle.

The ARA's kitchen

The festival, organized by La Casa dels Clàssics and Abacus, will run from October 8 to December 17, 2026, in different venues, such as the Palau de la Música, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the TNC, the CCCB, La Virreina, and the Sala Beckett. It will close with a reflection on the craft of reporting at the Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm. In the first part, the philosopher Gregorio Luri and the deputy director of ARA, Ignasi Aragay, will discuss truth and lies, and then the public will be able to enter the kitchen of a newsroom: journalists from ARA will speak with the newspaper's director, Esther Vera, and the public will be able to participate in the work of searching for and verifying information.

This analysis of deception also goes back to the classics. Although Immanuel Kant wrote an essay to demonstrate that we do not have the right to lie even to save a life, literature has shown how lies have been of great use to many of the great characters in fiction. "Ulysses is one of the great liars in the history of the West: he manages to win a war and return home thanks to his lies," recalls Abenoza. There will be a very special Odyssey led by Miriam Moukhles and Joan Sentís, with the collaboration of Christiane Jatahy, where Refree's music will improvise live over Homer's texts while the audience will play the worst role: they will be the mass of odious suitors who invade Penelope's home. "We also want to give a voice to all the women Ulysses was with," says Abenoza.

To delve deeper into these great liars of fiction, the festival will offer a reading course on The Oresteia, The Charterhouse of Parma, Dead Souls and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the Parlem de Clàssics cycle at the Sala Beckett will reflect on Fernando Pessoa, Edith Wharton, Luigi Pirandello and Euripides. Catalan literature will also play a leading role. In the courtyards of the Museu Frederic Marès, Àngels Gonyalons will give voice to four short stories by Víctor Català that explore falsehood. Meanwhile, the Sala Petita of the TNC will host on October 20th and 27th The Calderada, a re-reading of Pere Calders by the Indigest company, which reclaims the writer's time in Mexico and his deep connection with local culture. "Pere Calders' time in Mexico has often been seen as a thorn in his side, as a volatile and brief parenthesis during which the writer never fully integrated. However, the reality is that his time in the country left a much deeper mark and a much greater integration than is popularly believed," highlights Carles Pedragosa of Indigest. Indigest's research has revealed that Calders had a deep degree of knowledge of local Mexican cultures. "Calders did not invent anything he wrote during that period; all his writings were true," adds Pedragosa. The program also includes Tell me you love me even if it's a lie, based on texts by Montserrat Roig, adapted by Gemma Ruiz Palà.

In the musical and theatrical section, the Petit Palau will host the recital The Best of All Possible Worlds, inspired by Voltaire's Candide. On October 23rd, the Camerata will revisit Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Mazoni has delved into the Càntut project archive to adapt 13 popular songs about lies and romantic disappointment. The touch of humor and provocation will be provided by the monologue by Maria Rovira (Oye Sherman), taking up the baton of the reflection on sex that was started by Carlota Gurt in the previous edition. "It is not a standard monologue nor a conventional lecture; it is a much more fun game. It is a personal vision of the concept of a lie and its different edges through a heterogeneous combination of references. From Josep Lluís Núñez to Oscar Wilde, passing through Enric Marco and my own relationship with magic since childhood," asserts Rovira.