Emma Vilarasau: "Don't let tourists ruin La Mercè for you. Take over the city and enjoy it."

Barcelona"Don't let tourists upset or displace you; occupy the city and enjoy it." With this invitation to Barcelona residents to make the festival their own and fill the streets, concerts, and events, Emma Vilarasau closed the opening speech this Tuesday with which the Catalan capital opened the Mercè of 2025. A speech in which the actress also invited the residents of the Catalan capital to join her on the stages where she also forged the stage.

During Vilarasau's theatrical tour, there was also time for protests. Beyond the attack on overcrowding, the actress also had words for the housing crisis. She denounced that "today it is absolutely unfeasible to pay rent in Gràcia on an actor's salary" and warned that "it is truly sad and the beginning of decline for a city" when its young people cannot stay there. However, the most combative tone came when Vilarasau referred to the massacre in Gaza.

The actress asked as her "holiday wish" that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his entire military leadership be "tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity before an international criminal court," that "they be carried out once and for all and stop negotiating with a genocidal government." The actress, who considered Europe's response lukewarm, called on citizens to demonstrate on October 4th alongside the Palestinian community of Barcelona. Mayor Jaume Collboni also wanted to dedicate part of his speech to denouncing "the genocide being committed in Gaza."

A walk through the history of Catalan theater

These were the vindictive notes of a speech that Vilarasau focused on the world of theater, "the discipline that interacts most directly with the audience." Despite having lived in Barcelona between her twenties and thirties, the actress recalled the mark that the different stages of the Catalan capital have left on her. During her speech, Vilarasau toured the Teatre Lliure de Gràcia—which first fascinated her as a spectator before making her debut in 1983 with Hero–, but also by the Romea, the Grec, the Mercat de les Flors, the Sala Villarroel or the new headquarters of the Teatre Lliure in Montjuïc.

Many of the actors and directors with whom she has shared this journey have also passed through the stage of Vilarasau's speech – who studied at the Institut del Teatre –: Hermann Bonnín, Lluís Pasqual, Josep Maria Benet y Jornet, Carme Portaceli, Fabià Puigserver – whom Vilarasau remembered with emotion Colomer; Toni Sevilla or her husband, Jordi Bosch. Also legendary works of Catalan theatre such as The Return of the Jugglers, the Cyrano by Josep Maria Flotats, or August, where under the direction of Sergi Belbel she herself moved thousands of spectators alongside Lizaran.

An artistic journey that, in the case of Vilarasau –which in addition to its success in the theater has also triumphed in the cinema with films such as House on fire and on television with legendary series such as Nizaga of power and Ventdelplà– also shaped her life. In Barcelona, ​​she explained, she found her "first space of freedom" when she came from Sant Cugat as a teenager to fly under the radar, but her political consciousness was also born: first distributing leaflets and running from the police at the end of the Franco regime, later attending the Catalan Women's Days in 1976. She made a point of this Tuesday to welcome the Mercè of 2025.