The musician and creator Albert Pla (Sabadell, 1966) is now the presenter of Sala 30, a new program on Canal 33 that brings together artists who have at some point been linked to MACBA. A new 3Cat format whose objective, among other things, is to celebrate the 30 years of the Catalan museum.

Channel 33 has premiered Sala 30, a cultural program commemorating the Macba's 30th anniversary. To celebrate, the series approaches the anniversary through reflection rather than festivity or protest. These are eight forty-minute episodes that delve into different working axes of creative processes: form and substance, struggle, concept, enigma, gaze, space, body, and research. Each program invites four or five relevant artists who have passed through the museum to engage in a dialogue about these themes in a rural and bucolic setting that contrasts with the geometric and urban whiteness of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona building: a farmhouse and a set table with the elegant informality of a heartwarming fuet advertisement. The visual execution, from direction to editing and post-production, is beautiful and surprisingly quaint. It could be a podcast if it weren't for the need to see the guests' work to understand their proposals and their point of view in the conversation. Sala 30 connects with the aesthetic spirit of that old splendor of Channel 33, when it still seemed like a cohesive channel with a well-defined editorial line. The presenter is the singer and actor Albert Pla in his most accommodating and predisposed version. Surely, it is also his most strenuous and unusual facet because it is he who has to stimulate the debate among the guests. Pla has no choice but to flee from his more diffuse and anarchic media persona to energize the conversation, often fighting against his own shyness. The choice of presenter seems to obey a desire not to over-intellectualize the format and to give it a more relaxed and popular touch. "I'm the one with the least studies at this table," he comments with a sense of humor in the first chapter. The program always begins with a dialogue between Pla and one of the artists to introduce the chapter's theme. Afterwards, with the food ready and the table set, the rest of the guests arrive. It's interesting to see how they break the ice among themselves, in most cases, one of the most difficult moments for the presenter, to the point that in some episodes he asks them if the act of meeting and dialoguing overwhelms them or feels burdensome. The effectiveness of the format is irregular depending on the chemistry that arises between the guests and the ability to find a flowing thread. For those interested in art and culture, it is a magnificent opportunity to discover contemporary artists, understand generational evolutions and learn about forms of creation and research. Beyond the central theme, Sala 30 allows us to glimpse ways of life, creative processes and disciplines. Manolo Laguillo, Pilar Aymerich, Joan Fontcuberta, Frederic Amat, Núria Güell, Lúa Coderch, Laia Abril and a long etcetera parade around the set table of the farmhouse. Almost forty artists in a television proposal that seems too conventional, conservative and cautious for a program about Macba and contemporary art, which usually questions languages, experiments with codes and avoids neutrality.

After having attended the premiere of Hamlet By Peyu and Albert Pla (not the Shakespearean one, to be precise), I left the theater fascinated by the mind-bending performance they had just given us. A mind-bending performance that has the virtue of creatively summarizing all the ills of a world running rampant and without brakes: people living in their bubble of obsessions and selfishness, dysfunctional personalities behind a veneer of normality, the absurdity of a world in which it is no longer possible to live without truly living.

The program Wise nature TV3 brought together the creative talents of comic book artist Peyu and musician Albert Pla. "I invited him to lunch in Muntanyola, I made some macaroni, and here we are," says the man from Osona. Now this unlikely pair reunites on a stage, an imposing stage like Barcelona's Coliseum Theatre, to perform their unique show. Hamletwhich has nothing to do with Shakespeare. From December 23rd to April 6th, two peculiar characters will be forced to share a hospital room.

The irreverent Albert Pla and Peyu are the protagonists of the third issue of the quarterly paper magazine The Promotion, which publishes the El Foment Cultural Foundation for the entire Catalan-speaking world, and which ARA readers in the Girona region will find included free with the newspaper this Sunday, October 12. It consists of 116 pages of Catalan culture, gastronomy, and language in a magazine whose aim is to be a "national tool," in the words of its director, Andreu Mas. The magazine insert for the second consecutive quarter is part of a collaboration agreement between the ARA and The Promotion to "strengthen and promote Catalan culture, language, and gastronomy," according to Candi Granés, the founder and president of the Girona-based organization based in the Barri Vell neighborhood.

Albert Pla He is an immeasurable artist. One of those who escape any definition, style, or conventional trend that pigeonholes them. On stage, there's no one like him. He began singing in a bar in Jaén in 1989, and since then, he has been touring Catalonia, Spain, and Latin America for more than three decades with his concerts, shows, and performances. performances unclassifiable, Always provocative, yet endearing and magnetic, he balances irreverent banter with blunt truths. Now the singer is celebrating 35 years of career at the Strenes Festival in Girona (he was scheduled to perform in 2020, to commemorate his 30th birthday, but it was canceled due to the pandemic) with an extraordinary double concert on the steps of the cathedral.