"Except for women, we are worse off now than we were ten years ago," says theater director Sílvia Munt to underline the importance of continuing to perform Arthur Miller's plays on stage. Starting this Friday, Munt directs at the Teatre Goya View from the bridge, with David Selvas and Laura Conejero at the helm. Their version of the play arrives ten years after the one that Georges Lavaudant did at the Romea Theatre, with Eduard Fernández as the protagonist. "We have taken the play through a place that helps us connect with today's world, with this flawed and ancestral heterosexuality, with the domains of power. Now this A View from the Bridge it can happen on any corner you want in this world. Seeing it helps us understand it", highlights Munt. "With the passage of time you see it differently. The second feminist wave and the perspective on masculinity, ten years ago they weren't there. This new vision deeply oxygenates the work and makes it continue to resonate with us", states David Selvas.

From this Friday until October 29, Barcelona becomes a magnet for major international spectacles through the Flaix de Tardor. The second edition of the festival kicks off on Friday with two simultaneous proposals. At the Teatre Akadèmia, Enrico Ianniello will premiere Mamma by Annibale Ruccello, an exploration of traditional motherhood through the portrait of four women played by Fabrizia Sacchi. In parallel, the Mercat de les Flors will host the festival's big dance highlight of the year: How romantic, choreographed by Katerina Andreou and performed by Carte Blanche, the national company of Norway.

Playwright and theatre director Alfredo Sanzol (Madrid, 1972) says that, in recent years, rather than searching for stories "like a miner," what he does is "open windows, listen to others, and give them space." That is how he came across the experience of a friend, Ruth, who had spent the last night with her brother in the hospital before he died of an illness. Suddenly, Sanzol—author of multi-award-winning shows such as La tendresa (2019) and El bar que se tragó a todos los españoles (2021) and director of the Centro Dramático Nacional (CDN)—could not get that story out of his head. After a long process of research and interviewing about twenty pairs of siblings, the playwright wrote La última noche con mi hermano, which arrives this Thursday at the Sala Gran of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and will be performed there until November 1st. The production stars Nuria Mencía and Jesús Noguero and ends its run in Barcelona, after premiering in Madrid and also visiting Pamplona, Valencia, Seville, and Las Palmas.

Changes in the leadership of some of the Grup Focus theaters. Josep Maria Pou, until now director of the Teatre Romea, is leaving the position to take on new responsibilities. Pou will be artistic ambassador for Focus. "The group is sending me around the world to do what I like most: enter a theater and discover new shows, new ideas, new creators, new ways of telling stories. I will be a privileged observer and when I find something exciting, fun, and extraordinary that deserves to be shared, I will do everything possible to ensure it reaches any of the Focus stages," said Pou during an event held by the group with the media.

A sound artistic duo, a writer, a publishing house, a stage director, a musician, an actor, and a playwright are the winners of the 2026 National Culture Awards, the accolades that have been presented since 2009 by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CoNCA). The winners are Cabosanroque, Pol Guasch, Jande Editorial, Àlex Ollé, Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Oriol Pla, and Victoria Szpunberg, as announced this Friday at an event held at the Pau Casals Auditorium in El Vendrell, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of Pau Casals. The ceremony was hosted by journalist Andrea Gumes and was attended by the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, the Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández Almodóvar, and the President of the CoNCA, Margarida Troguet. Each award comes with a prize of 20,000 euros, and starting this year, there are no longer five winners, but seven. In their acceptance speeches, the winners agreed on championing culture, collective values, and public services as tools to confront reactionary forces.

"I was still an insecure woman with a complex and my self-esteem on the floor. Maybe I am nothing more than a victim of my generation," thinks Júlia, the protagonist of Punt de no retorn (L'Altra Editorial), the new novel by Maria Climent (Amposta, 1985). After the effervescent debut of Gina (2019) and being a finalist for the Òmnium award with A casa teníem un himne (2023), the writer from the Ebro region returns to bookstores with the brave, intimate, and funny story of a mother in her forties immersed in a galloping existential crisis. Worn out by an exhausting motherhood, Júlia will head to London with the longing to rediscover herself and to be happy again. Her journey—geographical, physical, and above all interior—is a rollercoaster of eccentricities, sex, and emotional highs and lows, narrated with a precise literary pulse strongly linked to the current moment.

The clown and stage director Leandre Ribera (Barcelona, 1966) was awarded this Thursday with the National Circus Prize, which is granted by the Ministry of Culture and is endowed with 30,000 euros. The jury awarded it to him "for the generosity of sharing his knowledge with the new generations of artists, bringing a unique and sensitive look to the stage". In particular, his direction stands out in productions such as Gota, by Txema Muñoz, which will be seen at the National Theatre of Catalonia starting October 15; Triplette, created with LaBú Teatre; Woof, with Pere Hosta, and U.F.A., with Cristina Solé. Ribera has worked primarily in the field of clowning and has contributed, according to the jury, in "works that celebrate the excellence of gestural humor and make visible the importance of the gaze in the circus".

The Canadian writer Anne Carson (Toronto, 1950) has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this Thursday. Author of books such as Decreacion, Beauty of the Husband and Albertine—all published by Vaso Roto and translated into Catalan by Núria Busquet Molist—, the poet is one of the most prominent voices of her generation. Carson has been awarded "for having created an audacious and inventive literature, which, starting from the classical tradition, has built new forms of contemporary literature." The Nobel Committee called the writer to announce the recognition. "We spoke for only a few minutes. She was very surprised and happy. She told me she was in Iceland listening to the wind," said the secretary of the Swedish Academy, Ingrid Carlberg.

Actress Raquel Ferri left the audience moved two years ago with Les mans at La Villarroel. Now the performer returns to the venue with a new show, Morning sun (from October 9th to November 8th), directed by Pau Roca and accompanied on stage by Míriam Iscla and Anna Güell. Together they bring to life the story of a grandmother, a mother, and a granddaughter over more than a century. In between, Ferri has starred in the TV3 series Delta on TV3, has been part of the macro-production The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon and has also participated in the film El ser querido by Rodrigo Sorogoyen.

The alert due to the risk of torrential rain and a "Mediterranean mini-hurricane" has forced theaters, cinemas, concert halls, and festivals in about twenty regions to cancel the activities scheduled for this Saturday starting at eight in the evening, in accordance with the resolution published by the Interior Department. The affected regions are Alt Empordà, Alt Penedès, Baix Empordà, Baix Llobregat, Barcelonès, Garraf, Garrotxa, Gironès, Maresme, Pla de l'Estany, Selva, Vallès Occidental, Vallès Oriental, Alt Camp, Baix Camp, Baix Penedès, Osona, Ripollès, Tarragonès, and Moianès.

Joel Joan (Barcelona, 1970) leaves behind some very professionally intense days: he started the week presenting Bons i dolents, the new show that will be performed starting next Tuesday at the Teatre Condal. And he has finished it this Friday promoting Escape room 2, the film that adapts the theatrical phenomenon created jointly with Héctor Claramunt, and which will be released in theaters on October 9th. "My life is pretty much my work. I have no hobbies, I don't have a sailboat, I only ski when I can," explains the actor, director, and playwright. Bons i dolents is the first show he has written all by himself.

The writer, essayist and literary critic Dolors Oller passed away this Friday, as reported by the mayor of Girona, Lluc Salellas, through social media. A graduate in philosophy and letters and with a doctorate in Romance philology, Oller dedicated her entire professional career to studying and teaching literature, as well as promoting it and cultivating it with volumes of poetry and essays such as La construcció del sentit (Empúries, 1986) and Virtuts textuals: Una tipologia de paraula poètica (1990). Oller was the life partner of the writer Narcís Comadira.

Some time ago, the Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Antwerp, 1976) took it for granted that he would not return to a stage. The artist set aside his role as a dancer and focused on creation, with works that have traveled around the world and moved thousands of spectators. In Catalonia, it has been possible to see, among others, Puz/zle (2013), Faun/Noetic (2024) and Ihsane (2024, just at the last Grec festival). In a meeting with the circus artist Martin Zimmermann, both began to reflect on the profession today, aging, and the fear of no longer being on stage. The conversation led to the need to create a show and the importance of Larbi also being present on stage. This is how Has been was conceived, which inaugurates the Temporada Alta festival this Sunday with a performance at the Municipal Theatre of Girona.

There is no more effective way to define István, the protagonist of the novel Carn (Amsterdam / Feltrinelli) by David Szalay (Montreal, 1974), than to say that he is a man of few words. And, against all odds, this laconic and silent man seduced the jury of the Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, a year ago with a story of desire, deep-seated trauma, power, and violence. Carn, which has just arrived in bookstores translated by Esther Roig, speaks about how circumstances transform people and portrays a fragile masculinity that protects itself behind a shell of coldness and distance. This is the first of Szalay's novels to be translated and the sixth by the writer, who had already been a finalist for the Booker Prize with All that man is (2016).

With the season already underway and the theater listings full of proposals, La Perla 29 presented this Tuesday the schedule that, throughout the course, will fill the Teatre de la Biblioteca. "We like to do it this way, when all the theaters have already presented their shows weeks ago. We are very excited to meet today, to feel like a group and to be able to explain what we are preparing," said the director of La Perla 29, Oriol Broggi. In fact, it has been a week since the theater has been in operation after the summer break and is hosting performances of Don't look, the production by Cultura i Conflicte which portrays the repression and torture during the Chilean dictatorship.

There are two great creative engines that keep appearing in the works of playwright and director Llàtzer Garcia: siblings and death. Regarding the former, they had appeared in other shows by the creator such as La pols (2014), which also explored the loss of a father. And he had also spoken of death in Al final, les visions (2022). Now Garcia approaches both themes from a different perspective: the occurrence of an unexpected accident that turns the lives of three more or less united sisters into a tragedy. The show is titled Grans bardisses and last year it won the Quim Masó award. After cancelling its premiere at the last Grec festival, it arrives on October 11th at the Teatre de Salt, as part of the Temporada Alta festival, and from February 25th it will be seen at the Teatre Lliure.

Adania Shibli (Arab al-Shibli, Palestine, 1974) asks that her books not be read from a political angle but rather a literary one, yet it is practically impossible to decouple the stories she recounts from the current situation in Palestine. With her previous novel, Minor Detail (Navona, 2024), Shibli was a finalist for the National Book Award and the International Booker Prize. She also experienced the controversy firsthand, when the Frankfurt Book Fair cancelled her. Her new book, Deception (La Magrana / Random House, translated from Arabic to Catalan by Mohammad Bittari) travels to the Palestine of the 90s through the hands of two nameless young people. Each of them carries out a clandestine action: the boy is caught and locked in prison, the girl is never caught. Based on these events, Shibli traces their existences and constructs a poignant story that reflects on the search for an individual future in a situation of oppression and collective exclusion.

The new U2 album, Carnaval de Luz (Island Records), will reach stores on November 13th and will be the band's first with new material in nine years. The album, which was announced this Thursday, will consist of 12 songs that explore themes such as spirituality, friendship, freedom, and resilience. Among the collaborations on the album will be a duet between Bono and Dolly Parton, who passed away at the end of August. The track, titled Torn, which revolves around the breaking of family ties, has turned out to be the legendary singer's last recorded vocal performance.

Awards always catch Oriol Pla working. This Wednesday at noon, while he was at the San Sebastián Festival presenting the film Esta soledad, by Javier Giner (Yo, adicto), the actor received a call from the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, to tell him that he has been awarded the National Theater Prize, which is granted by the Ministry of Culture and is endowed with 30,000 euros.

Playwright and director Josep Maria Miró (Prats de Lluçanès, 1977) says that, somewhat unintentionally, with his works he does nothing more than accumulate minorities. Through theater, Miró—one of the most international Catalan authors—has spoken about the issue of gender, identity, and language. And now, with his latest production, El Cadell, he delves into his peasant origins. Starring Mercè Aránega, Rosa Renom, and Marc Tarrida, the play will be performed from September 30 to November 1 at the Sala Petita of the National Theater of Catalonia (TNC).