When it comes to choosing the summer of her life, Isona Passola, film producer and president of the Ateneu Barcelonès, hesitates between 1994 and 2009. She clearly remembers the summer of 2009, when they filmed Black bread: "A very happy summer. It was the first time we shot a film in Catalan with the resources it required. In addition, I had the privilege of sharing it all with a director as brilliant as Agustí Villaronga." She recalls that it was a summer with a significant emotional component. They were more than prepared for the moment of truth, the filming, with the technical and artistic team ready, and spectacular sets.

Red signs in English have appeared on the streets of Barcelona, coworking spaces and macha tea bars. They invite you to learn Catalan in a different way: at the Ateneu Barcelonès. The century-old institution has created El Club de Català to help alleviate the lack of official training. Not only has it opened its classrooms for official courses run by the Consortium for Linguistic Normalization, which has sent nearly a hundred students, but it also has its own courses designed for foreigners. The idea is not to offer conventional, purely linguistic classes, but rather to offer a cultural approach, with theater outings, poetry readings, or, as the advertisement says, open-air sessions, at buzzing book club and beers at the garden bar.

Isona Passola i Vidal (Barcelona, 1953) has just been re-elected to preside over the Ateneu Barcelonès for another four years. Former president of the Catalan Film Academy, her greatest success as a producer was the film Black bread, with thirteen Gaudí Awards, nine Goyas, and an Oscar nomination. Involved in multiple cultural projects, I'm trying to take this conversation with Isona Passola into more personal territory. Her father, the Catalan businessman Ermengol Passola; her husband, Jordi Teixidor, who died in 2016; her son, Joan, who manages the Texas cinemas; and her name, which is now a brand: Isona.

"There has to be a civilized confrontation, which doesn't mean a war," said one. "I'm delighted that there could be an alternative candidacy to ours," said the other. The first is Jordi Casassas (Barcelona, ​​1948), who was president of the Ateneu Barcelonès from 2014 to 2021. The second is Isona Passola (Barcelona, ​​1953), the current president of the institution on Canuda Street. Both are running in this Thursday's elections (from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.), in which the members will decide what they want the Ateneu to be of the future, or at least for the next four years.

"There has to be a civilized confrontation, which doesn't mean a war," said one. "I'm delighted that there could be an alternative candidacy to ours," said the other. The first is Jordi Casassas (Barcelona, ​​1948), who was president of the Ateneu Barcelonès from 2014 to 2021. The second is Isona Passola (Barcelona, ​​1953), the current president of the institution on Canuda Street. Both are running in this Thursday's elections (from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.), in which the members will decide what they want the Ateneu to be of the future, or at least for the next four years.