Glory to the Princess of Girona who opens her doors at the most irreverent festival
Glòria Ribera and Svetlana kick off the Z Festival, created by people under 30, with a harsh critique of mass tourism.
Girona"We already know that here, in Girona, there are plenty of cyclists, and so that the boss wouldn't fail, that's why she invited me." Entering through the hallway of the Municipal Theater, accompanied by Catalonia's favorite Vallense heiress, Jèssica Pulla, authorities and an entourage of giants and big heads, Glòria Ribera (Guissona, 1994) ignited the young people gathered in the Barri Vell with songs this Thursday afternoon with an irreverent critique of mass tourism. the opening of the Z Festival, an equally irreverent offering created five years ago for those under 30, which suited her like a glove. With a crown on her head, crowning her as the Princess of Girona, the singer and new showgirl from Guissona introduced herself as "Her Majesty Gloria Ribera de Leonor," because she says she doesn't like Borbón and "Ermesenda was already hooked."
It was an hour-long, highly consistent show with magnificent stage design (and choreography), as well as a rigorous live musical, where Catalan popular culture was fused with a revival of the 1920s atmosphere of the Paral·lel. Glòria Ribera presents herself as a total diva, in tune with the references of exactly a century ago, when dissent had a voice but fascism was gradually on the rise (just as it is now). As if she were "the bombshell of El Molino," Ribera vindicated and rescued the legacy of "Catalan-speaking women" who were considered the most internationally renowned artists of the time.
One of them was Raquel Meller, born in Aragon but who triumphed in Paral·lel, where they say she walked accompanied by seven dogs, with the song Sell and sell"She was the most international diva of the Peninsula and beyond," said Ribera. Or Ramoneta (Ramoncita) Rovira, who, long before Sara Montiel, lent her voice to tango. Smoking I wait ("to the man I love") by Joan Viladomat and Félix Garzo, one from Manlleu and the other from Móra d'Ebre. Meller already sang a hundred years ago: "Sell and sell and sell, tourist come with me, / I don't want to sell you my life / you know what I'm talking about".
At the sound of the jackdaw, the stage was filled with We are and we will be with mechanical sardanas that made the tadpoles of the Falera Gironina convulse. Tradition constantly clashed with the transformation that Barcelona has undergone, where Ribera moved from Guissona to study at the Institut del Teatre. But without neglecting Girona and the Costa Brava. "You are the Menorca of Catalonia. It's hard," he said after finishing singing, happy to "have an apartment like a cage" in the capital of Catalonia.
Parade and closing party with Svetlana
He Girl deck closed a show where, surely for the first time, the audience danced in the hallway of the Municipal Theater "as if it were a tent." A sign of the great transformation this space has undergone since it was directed by Elena Carmona, who already had the great unknown Glòria Ribera to present her first program in 2021. But the party didn't end there. A parade left the Municipal Theater through the center of Girona to the Auditorium of the La Mercè Cultural Center, where the album presentation could be heard for the first time. Sow of Svetlana.
The Barcelona duo has catapulted itself thanks to hits electropop acts that criticize the touristification of the Catalan capital, but at the same time claim they will never leave. A show in which, unlike Glòria Ribera's, the music was recorded (and so were many of the vocals), but which thrilled with luxurious choreography and dancers.
As Festival Z director Eva Farré said, "we are here to defend what keeps us alive," in a "shared celebration but also a space of shared resistance." Festival Z organizes all kinds of performing arts activities between Girona and Salt until this Sunday.