The show La tercera fuga by Victoria Szpunberg has been one of the big winners of the 29th edition of the Max awards, which were presented on Monday night at the Roman Theatre of Mérida. The production about a family marked by flights and exile has been awarded best theatre cast, best theatrical authorship — with Victoria Szpunberg and Albert Pijuan at the helm —, and best actor for Ton Vieira. La tercera fuga premiered last April at the Sala Gran of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and will return there next season. In the best theatre show category, 1936 won, a production about the impact of the Civil War directed by Andrés Lima, with Catalan participation from Terrat and Albert Boronat in dramaturgy, along with Centro Dramático, and Check-in Producciones.When collecting the award, Szpunberg said that

There are novels with prose so heavy, with such a slow rhythm and such a short breath that the pages seem to wheeze with sedentary overweight. The prose of the novel Tota la vida buscant, by Kae Tempest (London, 1985), a very recognized name in the world of poetry, dramaturgy, and rhapsody, aims to be the complete opposite: agile, strong, cutting, tense, between electric lyricism, frontal narration, and raw realism. Sometimes Kae Tempest does not succeed in their purpose, and then they produce telegraphically anemic descriptions and repetitive passages, of a paralyzing prolixity. Other times they do achieve it, however, and then the novel vibrates with that authenticity that we usually attribute to things, people, and works not distorted by gratuitous sophistication or spurious intentions.The protagonist of the novel – I write it this way because the central character, Rothko, is non-binary, just like the author, and also because, beyond the opinion each reader may have about inclusive language, literature is always an exercise in personal creativity and expressiveness, and therefore Tempest is as legitimized as Joyce to do whatever she wants with the language– is thirty-six years old and has just returned to her town after spending fifteen years in prison. The panorama she finds there is just as desolate and depressing as when she had to leave: a junkie mother in total process of degradation; a failed and absent father; an affectionate but difficult sister... Furthermore, Rothko lives a double malaise, which has to do with her theoretically already overcome addictions and with her inability to feel fully as she is in her female body.The novel is divided into three parts, and unfolds like an omniscient panorama of which Rothko is the simultaneously afflicted and hopeful axis. In the first part, we witness Rothko's re-establishment of contact with his former world and his old life. Tempest describes very well Rothko's costly adaptation to freedom, his shame and helplessness in the face of a present that frightens him, and she also manages to paint in a very genuine and natural way the whole galaxy of wounded, damaged, poor, and often marginal supporting characters who swarm around his world. Where Tempest's talent shines brightest is in the synthetic narration of situations and the expressive exploration of personalities. In this regard, the pages about Rothko's parents, Ezra and Meg, why they are the way they are, what relationship they have maintained between them, are exceptional.Towards the redemptive culmination

The second part of the novel takes place twenty years earlier, and introduces us to Rothko as an adolescent, uncomfortable and out of place because she is a girl who wants to be a boy but dares not admit it. Although it also has emotional and strong passages, it is more conventional, like a typical coming-of-age novel: a decaying and unsupportive family environment, pleasure and vice, ambient homophobia, love and sex with a girl who understands her... In the third part, Tempest returns to the present and recovers the rhythm and plasticity of her best prose, and, with a melodramatic touch, offers a redemptive atonement and culmination, of possible reconstruction, for Rothko.The idea that art should have no function beyond being powerful and complex is very modern and perfectly legitimate and defensible, but it is also evident that it is an artistic conception that sometimes stems from the privilege of hegemony. I mean that Tempest, in her condition as a non-binary person who has already completed the complicated and painful process that the protagonist is considering undertaking, has also written this book to guide and explain. There are quite didactic dialogues, which are noticeably written to offer accompaniment and care to those who need it. One of the great things about good literature is that it makes familiar what is initially strange, and this Tota la vida buscant achieves it.

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"I am alive. My husband, Paul Auster, is dead." Thus begins Ghost Stories (Edicions 62 / Seix Barral, 2026; translated by Jordi Martín Lloret), the memoir that Siri Hustvedt (Minnesota, 1955) has needed to write after the "horrible years" that followed the diagnosis of lung cancer in the author of The New York Trilogy and Leviathan. The volume reconstructs the 43 years of relationship between Siri and Paul in chapters that advance and retreat in time to show the difficult moment the author was going through. Hustvedt's urgent yet reflective narrative combines with the last texts Auster wrote, a series of letters intended so that his grandson Miles –born months before the writer's death– can one day know what kind of family he has grown up in.

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If he has to choose, Fernando Franco will always choose the most arduous path. His filmography speaks of a filmmaker who doesn't like to make things easy for himself, and who imposes a double challenge on himself: to frontally address uncomfortable issues – the unstable nature of a woman with borderline personality disorder in La herida, the agony of a terminally ill patient in Morir, the sexuality of a person with cerebral palsy in La consagración de la primavera– without falling into the morbid sensationalism that these offer. This purpose makes more sense than ever in La luz, which features the most unassailable protagonist of all those the director has portrayed: a priest who becomes aware of the gravity of the abuses he inflicted on minors three decades ago.

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Carme Riera won the Sant Jordi prize (2003) with La meitat de l'ànima, an intrigue novel for which Ramon Simó and Magda Puyo have created a very fluid stage version, overcoming the difficulties inherent in a highly literary story, linked to the anti-Francoism of the fifties and sixties and anchored in public figures such as writers Albert Camus and Jorge Semprún, the anarchist and maquis Quico Sabaté, and the leader of the Lliga and former minister of Alfonso XIII Josep Bertran Musitu, who are only references for generations who already comb white hair.

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The French writer Julie Héraclès first saw when she was in high school the photograph that Robert Capa took after the end of the Nazi occupation in her hometown, Chartres. "Since I saw it, I've always kept it in mind. It has always intrigued me," she explains. The image shows Simone Touseau, a 23-year-old French woman, with her head shaved and a brand on her forehead made with a hot iron, holding her infant daughter and next to her mother, who had also been shaved. Both were publicly humiliated by an enraptured crowd on August 16, 1944. The photo is a symbol of the savage purge that took place in France after the Allied victory.

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Philosopher, essayist, and columnist, she teaches philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome. Donatella Di Cesare (Rome, 1956) has been fighting against the extreme right for years from all spheres, including the media and the streets. She is not afraid, even though she had to have police escort due to threats received from fascist and neo-Nazi groups. Among other works, she has published Heidegger y los judíos (2017), Tortura (2018), Terrorismo. Una guerra civil global (2017), Marranos (2019) and Sobre la vocación política de la filosofía (2020), translated into Spanish by Gedisa. In Catalan, Tecnofeixisme. La suspensió tàctica de la política (Arcàdia) has just been published. Translated by Coral Romà, the book reflects on how totalitarian forms of government are being imposed around the world and how the power of the people is being reduced.

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The mother and son who star in this Denmark by Lluïsa Cunillé, published in 2017 (Arola Editors) but written in 2014 — when the Spanish king abdicated to evade responsibilities with the Treasury—, are the author's classic everyday characters: nameless people who drag themselves through life expecting almost nothing from it. Cunillé mirrors them without explicitly stating it in Shakespeare's great tragedy, Prince Hamlet and his mother Gertrude. A mother and son in a humble little house in Copenhagen with a bourgeois theatre sofa in the middle and flies (something smells rotten). She sleeps in front of the television and the son arrives.

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Henry and June is the intimate diary in which Anaïs Nin (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1903 - 1977, Los Angeles) narrates her relationship with Henry Miller and his mysterious wife, June Mansfield, in 1930s Paris. The volume includes material excluded from the original diary and previously unpublished. The text comes from diaries 32 and 36, titled June, The Possessed, Henry, Apotheosisand Fall and Diary of a Possessed Woman, written between October 1931 and October 1932. Anaïs Nin opens the doors to her inner world with unusual sincerity. The reader delves into an intense period of the author's life marked by convoluted emotional bonds and by an attraction that defies social and moral norms. But there may also be readers who come away from "Henry and June" with the feeling that they have followed the adulterous day-to-day life of a spoiled, narcissistic child, a victim of an Oedipal complex with no sense of personal ethics, who writes with an emotional overload that overflows, always disguised as a "virgin-prostitute" and a "perverse angel", as she calls herself. Living fully without falling into internal conflicts

The charm of Anaïs Nin is that, beyond recounting turbulent personal relationships, she constructs a narrative that delves into issues such as self-construction, the contradictions of desire and jealousy, and the role of women in a still restrictive cultural context. Nin does not shy away from showing hesitations, paradoxes, or vulnerability; on the contrary, she turns them into literary material, exploring the extent to which it is possible to live fully without falling into internal conflicts. From late 1931 to late 1932, Nin falls in love with the writings of Henry Miller and the surprising beauty of his wife June. When June leaves Paris for New York, Henry and Anaïs begin a passionate (and toxic) affair that sexually and morally liberates her, but also sabotages her own marriage to Hugo and she begins to take an interest in psychoanalysis. Anaïs Nin builds a visceral chronicle about the fragmentation of desire. The love triangle she explains in her "confidant", the diary, is not a geometric figure with equal sides, but an emotional labyrinth where identity blurs into the other. Miller represents artistic and carnal liberation. He is the mirror of the rawness that she, until then trapped in refinement, needed to write from truth. The attraction to June is almost mystical. Nin not only desires June, but desires to be June. She represents the wild, unattainable, and destructive femininity that fascinates and terrifies the author. Nin does not position herself in a passive vertex; she is the narrative center that manipulates and analyzes the tensions. The triangle serves to explore her own bisexuality and the capacity to love multiple versions of reality simultaneously.Anaïs Nin's style in Henry and June stands out for a writing rich in emotional nuances that combines psychological reflection and feminist sensibility. The writer filters the sordidness of relationships through an dreamlike language, transforming adultery into a religious quest for freedom. It also offers a vivid look at interwar Paris, at the restless and experimental artistic atmosphere, a time when creative freedom coexisted with deep insecurities. Published in 1986 (many years after it was written), Henry and June had a strong impact because it revealed a more intimate and daring facet of the author. The book can be read as a bold personal testimony and also as a key piece for understanding her literary and life journey.

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The Grand Honorary Prize of Comic Barcelona that he received last year –at only 56 years old– was the last recognition missing for Paco Roca (Valencia, 1969), the most important author of Spanish comics of the 21st century, who despite his success continues to strive to offer lively and restless works, whether How does this comic's journey begin?

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Colm Tóibín (Enniscorthy, 1955), to be able to say his piece about Mercè Rodoreda –an author he has been reading for decades–, has found a gap in his extremely tight schedule and has crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Los Angeles. The author of novels such as Brooklyn and The Magician –both in Catalan from the Amsterdam publishing house– has been the last guest of the exhibitionRodoreda, a forest, which closed its doors a few days ago at the CCCB. 81,880 people have visited it since December, a milestone that has made it the seventh most visited exhibition in the history of the Barcelona venue and the most successful one focused on literature, surpassing those programmed for Claudio Magris, Salvador Espriu and W.G. Sebald.

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"We can raise no other witness than that of powerlessness. The only hope is the improbable. We must resist," the philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin declared less than two months ago in a long interview in Le Monde, the last of the public appearances he was able to make before his death, in Paris, at the age of 104, after a prolific and highly recognized career spanning eight decades. Morin lamented "the catastrophic process underway" caused by actions such as those of "Trump and Netanyahu." Despite his concern "about the neo-authoritarian regression spreading throughout the world," the thinker — one of the most influential intellectuals of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century — stated that he continued to "believe in humanity despite doubting it" and called for the urgent activation of "a conscious regenerationism of the identity of origin and the shared destiny of all humans.

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There is a desire to play in the mischievous gaze of the Galician stage director Marta Pazos. More than provoking, she seeks to surprise. "Laughter originates in the unexpected," she recalls at a press conference regarding the new production of Le nozze di Figaro (1786), the first masterpiece by the tandem formed by Mozart and the poet Lorenzo Da Ponte. The production, directed by Pazos and with Giovanni Antonini leading the orchestra, will have fourteen performances from June 4 to 21. "I am having a great time in this production by Marta that surprised us so much at first," assures the soprano from El Montsià, Sara Blanch, Susanna in a first cast shared with the Italian bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni (Figaro), the Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva (Cherubino), the Italian baritone Andrè Schuen (Count Almaviva), and the Guatemalan soprano Adriana González (Countess Almaviva), among others. "I have sung the role of Figaro many times, and I have found a very fresh production, with a very new approach," exclaims Pisaroni, who is performing in substitution of baritone Konstantin Krimmel, who is out due to a foot injury. Everyone agrees: they are having a lot of fun. "And I hope it will be a success," says Schuen, who is finally debuting at the Liceu in an operatic role after having given many lied recitals around the country. after having given many lied recitals around the country.

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There is a gratifying solidity, in Nacho Vegas (Gijón, 1974) from the album Vidas semipreciosas (Oso Polita, 2026), recorded in Catalonia and with collaborations by Albert Pla and Rodrigo Cuevas. With a rock that touches on folk and melodic song, he crafts a repertoire that includes some of the best songs from the Asturian musician's career, also in Asturian. Furthermore, it includes "memory capsules" with the voices of victims of political and labor conflicts (Javitxu Aijón, Anna Gabriel and Adur Ramirez), because, after all, he is "an internationalist red, son of Cristina Vegas, anti-fascist", as he sings in Fíu. This Saturday, May 30, he performs at Sala Apolo in Barcelona (9 PM), well accompanied by Miren Arbaiza, Joseba Irazoki, Hans Laguna, Manu Molina and Ferran Resines.

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There is a teenage memory in the life of Irene Rubio (Sallent, 1991) that remained etched in her mind. When she was 16 years old, one day her mother decided to teach her how to make macaroni. "She put me there, with the boiling pot in front of me, and told me: 'Now you have to put salt in the water.' When I asked her why, she replied: 'Because that's how it's been done all my life,'" explains the writer. Over time, she realized that this answer was repeated on other occasions, and this made her uneasy. From that strangeness, Rubio has made a novel: Seràs la vall (L'Altra Editorial), with which she has won the Documenta 2025 prize, it is a dystopia about a female community that has always lived constrained by ancestral customs.

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Until she turned thirty, Mar Márquez (Barcelona, 1981) only spoke Spanish. Despite being born and living in Catalonia, her entire environment communicated in that language, so for her Catalan was a foreign and distant language. But Márquez started working in a place where the working language was Catalan, and she began a relationship with a partner who also spoke it, so she made a decision: "I chose Catalan, I made it my chosen and beloved language. It was hard for me, but I stand by it. Since then, I write and think in Catalan," she states. The choice is even more significant because it was linked to her first steps as a future writer. Starting from classes at the Ateneu Barcelonès, Márquez began to craft the seed of her first novel, Amat Amat, which she has just published with Males Herbes. "I am a great defender of the language. Let's create culture in Catalan, please," Márquez demands.

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"A lot is demanded in a very short time. It's the dictatorship of speed: you have to release a song, and then another, and a video, and do a promotion... I don't know if it's very productive. Perhaps the approach should be different," says Axel Magnani, La Pegatina's trumpeter. "And the platforms ask you for more songs because they position you better, and collaborations. It has been conveyed to us that we have to be viral and stand out continuously," adds singer Adrià Salas. "This time we've made an album cooked more slowly, without the stress of having to go into the studio every now and then," explains guitarist and singer Rubén Sierra. They come from almost another era. In fact, La Pegatina was born over twenty years ago in Montcada i Reixac, on the street and under the shelter of that quintessential mestizo Barcelona sound. And they seem to be pursuing precisely that foundational spirit on the album Fuego del barrio (Calaverita-Música Global), which this Friday, May 29th, they present live at the Poble Espanyol.

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Robert Schumann and Richard Wagner had many things in common and many convergent points between them. But also many divergent ones. Uniting them with the Rhine river as a common link is a good idea, because the fluvial knife that cuts a good part of Germany was the primary motive for Schumann's third (chronologically fourth and last) symphony, while Wagner begins the cycle The Ring of the Nibelung with a prologue (Das Rheingold), the first scene of which takes place precisely at the bottom of the aforementioned river. In the case of the concert at the Palau de la Música, however, it was the final scene of the first day (Die Walküre) that occupied the second part.However, and unfortunately, what could have been a splendid end-of-season party for Palau 100 was left unfinished. We expected a lot from an orchestra that has set the bar very high in other concerts and recordings, with or without the baton of the one who on Wednesday occupied the podium in the modernist auditorium: an Iván Fischer somewhat disheveled, without many ideas and who led a Renana with an uncertain start and a finish without pain or glory. And the peculiar arrangement of the strings (first violins and cellos on the left, violas and second violins on the right, and double basses at the back) did not have the imaginative flair that many of us expected in service of Schumann's magnificent symphony.And the second part disappointed due to the woody voice of Hanno Müller-Brachmann, a singer with more than sufficient volume and projection but with changing colors, scarce expressiveness, and zero authority in the role of Wotan, who demands more roundness and vocal presence. Fortunately, soprano Ingela Brimberg's Brünnhilde had the sufficient metal that the Valkyrie demands, in a finale of the act that is a cocktail of feelings between father and daughter before she ends up asleep on a rock surrounded by fire.Nor did the orchestra here seem particularly involved in terms of narrativity and theatricality, despite the good level of the different sections (especially the velvety strings and the punchy brass), but without Fischer's direction adding much to it.By the way, it would be appreciated if a scene like this, long and dense, had the corresponding subtitles, so that Wagner's text would be understandable to everyone. Also for the Wagnerians who, in Barcelona, are legion.

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What do science and language have in common today? Playwright and director Jordi Oriol has no doubt: the uncertainty principle. "Scientists have reached a point where they need to know more, but they can't. Science has begun to speak in metaphors, mathematics is about statistics and probabilities. We have gone from Shakespearean to be or not to be to to be and not to be at the same time," says Oriol. Faced with this reality, the creator has built a show that unites the two worlds to make their connections evident. Titled The Last Atom (which can also be read as "L'ultimàtum", in one of the creator's fun linguistic winks), the production stars Joan Carreras and Mia Esteve and will be performed from May 29 to June 21 at the Teatre Goya.

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Behind the stone walls of the monastery of Pedralbes many generations of women have lived for seven centuries, and many stories have unfolded. We know many things about struggles, fights for survival, talent, and creativity, thanks to documents and stones, but now it is the turn of the dead. Through DNA, tissues, parchments, floral offerings and aromatic plants, and skeletal remains from the tombs, a new chapter is opening. What began as a conservation intervention to commemorate the seventh centenary of the convent (1326-2026) has become a fascinating archaeological and genetic research. A multidisciplinary team has opened eight tombs from the 14th century and found 25 individuals. And the surprises have only just begun.

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