When she was 13 or 14, actress Mireia Aixalà read a book about an IRA terrorist. "I don't remember the title. I was very young and had the idea that terrorists were always bad. With that book, I understood what it meant to be part of a terrorist group. It was a book designed for young people, and it had a big impact on me," the actress recalls. From that moment on, Aixalà has always been drawn to books that explore the Northern Ireland conflict and its repercussions. That's why she can't help but recommend one of the reference titles published in recent years: Don't say anything, from the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe (Periscope), translated into Catalan by Ricard Gil. A combination of journalistic investigation and essay, the book chronicles five decades of the conflict through the eyes of two former members of the IRA (Irish Republican Army), a victim of the paramilitary organization, and one of the key figures in the political mediation effort to achieve peace between supporters of Irish unification and loyalists. Don't say anything It was a huge international success and It was adapted for television, with a series released last year.

The playwright Sergi Pompermayer (Barcelona, ​​​​1967) began writing the American Trilogy after fulfilling a dream: to travel a section of Route 66 in the United States with his partner, actress Mireia Aixalà, and reach the Grand Canyon. There, the idea of creating three plays rooted in Catalonia, but with the colonial past as a backdrop, was born. The first to premiere was America, about the fall from grace of a bourgeois family and its links to slavery, and now comes Grand Canyon, which I had actually written before. Directed by Pere Arquillué, the production is part of the Grec festival and will be at La Villarroel from this Sunday until August 3.