The Capitol Theatre on La Rambla will reopen under municipal ownership.

BarcelonaThe Capitol Club on La Rambla will reopen its doors once again. According to ARA, Barcelona City Council has reached an agreement with the property's owner to keep the building and allow the facility to reopen under municipal ownership in 2027. The council plans to open a private management competition, a model it is already using with spaces such as El Molino and Paral·lel, which manages the city's 41 libraries and is currently renting two premises in another building on La Rambla, for which it pays €200,000 a year in rent.

The Capitol Club closed its doors at the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020. It was announced in December 2019 that the owner of the premises would not renew the rental contract in Balaña, who had been its manager for 58 years, since 1962. Artists and spectators They mobilized with a manifesto to ask the administrations to save the space. If at that pre-pandemic time Gentrification was causing theaters to close.In the current context, the performing arts are achieving record audiences and box office receipts in the city, and industry stakeholders are calling for the opening of new medium-sized venues, such as the Capitol. Recently, the reopening of the Sala Muntaner, El Molino, a new venue in La Gleva, a change in management at the Teatro del Raval, and the start of construction on the Teatro Arnau have been announced.

The operation that made it possible

The Capitol had been closed and fenced for five years, but it had not been converted into a commercial space: this was prevented by the fact that the premises have permits as a cultural facility. To secure the transfer to the City Council, the council changed the urban planning classification of two properties. 7 and 9 Calle Santa Anna, the theater building, will become a public facility to house the theater and the Library Consortium, specifically in the space that once housed a boarding house that is now closed. The Intercontinental Hotel, located above the Capitol, will remain open.

In return, 2 Calle Fontanella, the Telefónica building at Portal del Ángel, which is owned by the owners themselves, will change its facility classification and become a commercial facility, that is, for office and commercial use. This generates a capital gain of approximately 37 million euros, which is realized in the transfer of the Capitol building and also includes the renovation of the theater and the adaptation of the offices, carried out by the current owner. "We've agreed on a turnkey operation. The theater wins, La Rambla wins, Barcelona wins," Collboni said. "Because the Telefónica building, which until now has had little use, will also be used for business and, therefore, will bring Barcelona residents to the city center."

Light on the Rambla

The theater will require renovations and is scheduled to open for the Mercè Festival in 2027 with both theaters fully operational: one with 402 seats and the other with 198. For Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, this is another step toward "consolidating and recovering La Rambla as the city's cultural hub." "We are recovering an emblematic space in our city," he said before industry representatives such as the president of the Liceu, Salvador Alemany; the president of ADETCA, Isabel Vidal; and Maria José Balañá, director of the Balaña Group, which managed the theater until 2020. The Councilor for Culture, Xavier Marcé, has announced that the tender to manage the theater will be launched in "seven or eight months." Vidal is convinced that there will be companies willing to manage this new public-owned theater: "I'm convinced, there were already some when it closed. Then there was talk of decline," Isabel Vidal recalled, "and now, a few years later, it's reopening with a very good agreement for the city, which doesn't cost a single euro and recovers an emblematic theater.

The Capitol had opened its doors in 1926 as a cinema. Since 1997 it had been dedicated exclusively to theater: it had been the home of Pepe Rubianes (who gave its name to Room 1), of Àngel Pavlovski, of Pep Tosar and The story of Mr. Sömmer andfrom comedies likeMen are from Mars and women are from Venus,The shape of things and The exceptional things, among many others. In July 2019, flooding at the Hotel Continental had already forced the cancellation of performances and construction work, something that the residents of Las Ramblas They saw it as a warning of the end of a phase: they feared that another cultural asset would be lost on La Rambla.

Now this emblematic street, occupied by tourists, souvenir shops, and currency exchange centers, will regain a cultural space. Along with the Poliorama and the Liceu, these will be the three spaces dedicated to live culture, as the Teatre Principal project never got off the ground. announced five years agoJaume Collboni said that the announced idea "continues to move forward" and that the City Council has done its part, but that the project "is on the agenda of two private parties."