When it comes to choosing a lead writer, actress Anna Sahun doesn't hesitate for a moment: the Frenchman Emmanuel Carrère is one of the indispensable names in her library since she discovered him with L'adversari (Anagrama), originally published over twenty years ago. "It's a quick read, a very thin book, but you can't put it down," emphasizes the performer, who recalls discovering the French writer through her husband, actor and director Joel Joan. In L'adversari, which was adapted for the theatre in 2022, Carrère narrates the story of Jean-Claude Romand, a man who maintained a double life for eighteen years and who murdered his wife, children, and parents and attempted suicide when the truth was about to come out.

Until the 2010s, Fermí Casado was primarily an actor recognized for his work in series such as Estació d'enllaç, Mar de fons, and El cor de la ciutat. He rose to fame by playing the character of Tomàs, the fictional son of Àngels Poch and Josep Maria Pou in that popular TV3 fiction set in a Barcelona train station. From then on, Casado continued to string together theater performances and television projects, through which he built a solid acting career alongside directors such as Mario Gas, Sergi Belbel, Joan Lluís Bozzo, and Roser Batalla.

Rosa Boladeras (Terrassa, 1972) is an actress driven by passion. Enthusiasm led her to make the stage her vocation at a young age, and since then, she has built a very long career made up of shows and television projects that have made her one of the most outstanding performers in our country. After being away from theater for seven years to dedicate herself to municipal politics, at the Terrassa City Council, Boladeras is now experiencing one of the most recognized moments of her professional career thanks to the Margarida Xirgu award, which she received on Monday at the Teatre Romea for her work in the show she received on Monday at the Teatre Romea for her work in the show I Have a Forest in My Brain, by Guadalupe Sáez and directed by Alícia Gorina at Sala Beckett.

Pau Casals' echo is international, but it is not widely known that his brother Enric also contributed to his success. "He was Pau Casals' technical soul. He was the one who orchestrated and also acted as his manager, friend, and assistant director," points out stage director Xavier Albertí. In alliance with writer Jordi Lara, they have created a show about the relationship between the two Casals brothers and their ways of experiencing success. The play is titled "Les barques volen pel cel" and premieres on Saturday at the Church of Santa Maria d'Àneu, as part of the Dansàneu festival. Later, in December, it will also be performed at the Palau de la Música.

The last time the Russian writer Artem Mozgovoy (Kemerovo, 1985) left his mother's house, he destroyed all his childhood and youth diaries. "I didn't want to leave them and I couldn't take them with me. It was very sad, because all those notebooks contained my loves and heartbreaks, the good and bad things I had experienced up to then," explains Mozgovoy. Paradoxically, that gesture would give birth some time later to his first novel, Spring in Siberia, which was originally published in English in 2023 and has now arrived in bookstores in Catalan from Comanegra with a translation by Jordi Martín Lloret. Once settled in another country, when he already felt "safe, a new man", Mozgovoy began to dig into his memory.

The Barcelona-born writer Luis Goytisolo, the last member of a lineage of writers who renewed contemporary Spanish narrative, died on Sunday at the age of 91 in his rural retreat in Vimbodí, in Conca de Barberà, as reported on Monday at midnight the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), an institution of which he had been an academic since 1995. Goytisolo is the author of an extensive literary work characterized by his capacity for innovation both formally and narratively. One of his most celebrated literary projects is the monumental tetralogy "}Antagonism –formed by the volumes Count, The green of May to the sea, The wrath of Achilles and Theory of knowledge–, which spans from the Civil War to late Francoism and which represented a literary milestone for the narrative of the 70s and 80s. His constant search for new literary territories earned him the National Prize for Spanish Literature in 2013 and recognitions such as the National Literature Prize in 1993 for "Statues with pigeons.

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, with 29.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to 2025 data. South Korean director Jinyeob Lee wanted to bring this issue to the stage and decided to do so by drawing inspiration from one of the country's most deeply rooted traditional practices: that of the female divers of Jeju Island, who practice free-diving to collect seafood. Starting from the diving technique, Lee devised the show "Muljil", which she has performed with the company Elephants Laugh and which will be shown this Wednesday and Thursday at the Teatre Lliure, as part of the Grec festival. The play places four cubicles filled with water on stage. In each, an performer is submerged with the water up to their nose.

New Zealand actor Sam Neill (Omagh, 1947) has died at the age of 78, as reported by the family in a statement obtained by Reuters agency. With a career spanning over five decades and 150 roles, Neill was best known for starring in films such as Jurassic Park (1993), in which he played paleontologist Alan Grant. Among his most recognized performances are also the farmer in the film The Piano (1993) and Major Chester Campbell in the first two seasons of the series Peaky Blinders (2013-2014). Praised especially for his interpretive versatility, Neill's career was recognized worldwide. The film The Piano, which he starred in with Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Neill was also nominated three times for Golden Globes and once for an Emmy. In 2019 he visited Catalonia to receive the Grand Honorary Prize of the Sitges Film Festival.

Although Barcelona broke its heat record this Wednesday and the Teatre Grec stage is outdoors, Argentine actor Joaquín Furriel (Lomas de Zamora, 1974) is not afraid of the city's high temperatures. "I premiered my first play when I was 13, on December 20th in Buenos Aires, which is like performing here in July. I'm always happy when I perform in the heat, it's a caress for my soul," the performer highlights. He is the protagonist of The True Story of Richard III, a show directed by Calixto Bieito that will be performed this Friday and Saturday as part of the Grec festival. The play arrives in Barcelona after being staged in Madrid and Bilbao and having a season and national tour in Argentina with a very enviable reception: for two and a half months, the show could be seen from Wednesday to Sunday at the Teatro San Martín, which has a capacity of 950 people. They sold out all tickets.

The Grec festival annually seeks out the most in-vogue creators on the international scene to bring them to Barcelona and thus become a showcase for the most celebrated shows worldwide. In this year's edition, one of these names is that of South African artist Ntando Cele (Durban, 1980), who has landed in the Catalan capital with two proposals in her suitcase: Wasted land (which is being performed at the Teatre Lliure this Friday and Saturday) and SPAfrica (which will be seen this Tuesday and Wednesday at the Centre de les Arts Lliures).

The Mexican playwright, director, and actor Anacarsis Ramos (Campeche, 1996) has been working since he can remember. Born into a family of salespeople, during his childhood and adolescence he saw dozens of businesses come and go from his home without any of them truly taking root. His mother, Josefina Orlaineta, has had more than 40 different jobs – most of which involved using the house as a warehouse or workshop – and all of this made household economics an inseparable element of his daily life. With all this experience, Ramos has built a show that he has titled "My mother and the money, and which gives the mother a new job: that of interpreter. The show has been to Belgium, Greece, Canada and Germany, and will now be seen at the Espai Lliure on Tuesday 7 and Wednesday 8 July, as part of the Grec Festival.

What do we do with love when a relationship ends? Can an ex-partner be kept close even if the bond has changed? Playwright and theatre director Jumon Erra assures that if he creates a show, "it's to show the difficult things, not the easy ones." That's why the engine powering his new musical, titled After Us, is precisely what to do with someone you love very much, but with whom you can no longer have a romantic relationship. The show is a co-production by Grec with La Santa Pepa and Teatre Texas, and will be performed in this venue from July 30 to August 2. It will return in the autumn, just as the season begins, from September 22 to November 15.

The Josep Carreras Research Institute (IJC) suffered "significant deficiencies" that "have led or may lead to irregularities" in the financial management of 2023, under the direction of cancer researcher Manel Esteller. This is the conclusion of theFinal financial control report made by the Generalitat after ARA revealed the transfers of money and impersonations at the research institute during Esteller's tenure.

In 2008, the literature professor from Capellades Joan Pinyol discovered that his grandfather was not buried in the cemetery of Lleida, where his family had brought flowers for 40 years, but in the Valley of the Fallen. The truth came to light thanks to an article in the magazine Sàpiens written by ARA journalist Sílvia Marimon, in which historian Queralt Solé detailed the names of the thousands of dead that Franco removed from Catalan cemeteries (in most cases without the families' permission or knowledge) to fill the crypts of his mausoleum. That discovery marked a turning point in Joan Pinyol's life: from then on, he began a struggle that has not yet ended to recover his grandfather's body and bury him next to his grandmother, in Capellades.

The American singer and songwriter Victor Willis (Dallas, 1951), leader of the group Village People, died this Tuesday at the age of 74 after a "brief but aggressive illness," as reported by the band on their Facebook page. Willis was the singer and co-author of some of the group's greatest hits such as YMCA, Go West, Macho Man, and In the navy. The musician embodied characters such as the policeman and the Navy officer within the group's visual aesthetic, based on interpreting male archetypes on stage. Willis's role was fundamental to the configuration of the sound and image with which Village People became an international phenomenon during the 70s and a symbol of queer culture.

Liadan Ní Chuinn (Northern Ireland, 1998) is the pseudonym of a writer – who also does not reveal their gender or allow themselves to be photographed – who has revolutionized the English publishing market with their debut. Encara hi sou tots (La Segona Perifèria / Feltrinelli) collects six unsettling and striking stories about the still-open wound of the Northern Ireland conflict in today's society. Translated into Catalan by Ariadna Pous, the book deeply portrays the silences that beat within Irish families and that, despite the passage of time, have become a festering pain passed down from generation to generation. The interview with ARA is a conversation by email.

Perhaps because it's our anniversary, the Teatre Grec Gardens are buzzing with people and activity, even though it's just past seven in the evening. It's one of the summer's big events and everyone wants to enjoy it and talk about it. The heat doesn't make it easy (shadows are highly sought after, hats and fans, at full speed), but the collective enthusiasm overcomes everything. The ducks quack contentedly – and will do so even more during the night – from the pond that welcomes one of Barcelona's most emblematic spaces. "At least they're in the water," says a woman to the man accompanying her, who follows her carrying two glasses full to the brim.

Newton's first law states that bodies tend to remain as they are unless acted upon by an external force. In this statement, playwright and director Eu Manzanares saw a clear parallel with the way our society functions. Manzanares, author of shows such as Nessun dorma (2023) and Lo nuestro (2022), decided to title her latest production Primera llei de Newton because she felt it best summarized the dilemma the protagonists face: when the system is unfair, is it better to cheat or follow the rules? The production is part of the Grec Festival and is performed from July 1 to August 2 at La Villarroel.

From June 29 to August 2, the Grec festival will present an eclectic and unique program across Barcelona, featuring theater, dance, music, circus, and performances. The city's most important performing arts festival, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, will be inaugurated with The Threepenny Operadirected by Marta Pazos and will feature almost a hundred shows. Of all of them, we have made a selection with the most notable.

50 years ago, a group of artists joined forces with one goal: to reclaim the Grec Theatre and put it at the service of the people. From that collective impulse, the Grec was born, a festival that in the last five decades has become a showcase for the best international shows and, at the same time, a springboard for local creation. We take advantage of the anniversary to rescue the festival's behind-the-scenes history from the hands of artists and directors who have been part of it all this time.