Albert Pla i Peyu: "Now no one censors you, your sponsor abandons you."

GironaThe irreverent Albert Pla and Peyu are the protagonists of the third issue of the quarterly paper magazine The Promotion, which publishes the El Foment Cultural Foundation for the entire Catalan-speaking world, and which ARA readers in the Girona region will find included free with the newspaper this Sunday, October 12. It consists of 116 pages of Catalan culture, gastronomy, and language in a magazine whose aim is to be a "national tool," in the words of its director, Andreu Mas. The magazine insert for the second consecutive quarter is part of a collaboration agreement between the ARA and The Promotion to "strengthen and promote Catalan culture, language, and gastronomy," according to Candi Granés, the founder and president of the Girona-based organization based in the Barri Vell neighborhood.

Sitting in one of the beds in the fictional hospital where the play is set Hamlet, who will be presenting this November at the Coliseum in Barcelona and dressed in pajamas and hospital gowns, Albert Pla and Peyu submit to the "non-interview" of the section Shoulders covered, a three-way dialogue with Andreu Mas. Pla and Peyu agree that in the Catalonia of 2025, irreverence still has a price: "Now nobody censors you, your sponsor abandons you," confesses Albert Pla, and Peyu finishes with a personal anecdote: "I once asked for a car from a brand that told me they didn't have any more cars. I don't know what to do it..."

Sitting back to back, both artists critically review a Catalonia with low self-esteem. Peyu paints a picture of this with all its crudeness: "We bluff sometimes, but from the couch." In the conversation, he welcomes a little bit of everyone: the foreign cyclists invading the country – "it's better not to go against those in charge. If the cyclists are in charge now, then we'll go with the cyclists"; the happy people – "I get really stressed out by very happy people, especially after vacations," confesses Peyu; and the journalists – "these interviews are strange, because they're always asking you questions about things they tell you you've said. We're answering about lies," says Albert Pla.

The "non-interview" has some somewhat surreal moments and a lot of reading between the lines. What's beyond dispute is that the macaroni by Quimi Portet, responsible for the new work by Pla and Peyu, makes you smarter and doesn't contain lysergic substances.

María del Mar Bonet, hopeless

Another of the protagonists of the 116 pages ofThe Promotion It's singer Maria del Mar Bonet, who in a very personal interview delivers a very forceful message: "If we don't take a very strong turn, there's no hope for the world." The Mallorcan singer laments that humanity doesn't take care of the planet and doesn't agree with the claim that "there are too many people."

The magazine The Promotion includes the popular and traditional culture supplement The Sibyl, which dedicates its main report to the work carried out by the promoters of the Càntut festival and project, which is promoted from Cassà de la Selva (Gironès) and has already collected more than 2,000 songs, making it the most important oral heritage archive in Catalonia.