Among all the authentic Barcelona institutions that still withstand the onslaught of time, the Cinema Maldà is undoubtedly one of the essentials. Its mere existence is, in itself, a small miracle. In the heart of Ciutat Vella, at number 5 Carrer del Pi, it stands like an indestructible monolith against the inexorable swings of gentrification, runaway tourism, and the destruction of the neighborhood. The only cinema in the nerve center of Barcelona. It is easy to say. The Comèdia closed a couple of years ago, and the Aribau and the Renoir Floridablanca are the only ones that accompany it in its radius of influence. And the Filmoteca, of course, but it plays in a different league.

They met in the most serendipitous way, back when social media didn't exist and finding young people who shared the same passion was a much slower process. Some of them had participated in Opera in Secondary School, an educational project that brought together students from various high schools in Barcelona to perform operas. When they finished, they wrote dedications in the scripts and exchanged phone numbers. Some time later, during recess, Adrià Aubert and a group of friends wanted to put on a musical, and since they needed people, he decided to go looking for those young people he had met in Opera in Secondary School. "I remember you called some of them on their landlines—there weren't cell phones back then—and their parents answered! And you sent others a letter," says Núria Cuyàs.

The address of the Maldà Theatre is 5 Pi Street, right staircase, 3rd floor, in Barcelona's Ciutat Vella district, which lends the event a clandestine air. On closer inspection, the in-person expression of culture is increasingly an act against the system of digital alienation that guides (and scatters) the attention of the masses. That a group of 54 people climb a worn staircase of an old house on a weekday evening to see a play in a venue in Ciutat Vella, Barcelona, ​​is a form of self-determination. The same self-determination being exercised by all the theatre, dance, choral, and performing groups that are rehearsing or about to perform at that hour.