With the arrival of cold weather, cultural shelters become more necessary. This is literal but also a metaphor. This week we have been covering the Gijón International Film Festival (which ends on November 23) and we have felt like a refuge: alongside Rossy de Palma, Ramón Lluis Bande and Carla Simón. And the more than 80,000 Latin music records, the Gladys Palmera collection, which is the most important in the world and which Spain wants to stay in Madrid, will also be a refuge. We continue here with other places to take refuge.
a concert
Ultra Sunn (Madrid and Barcelona). Belgium has an excellent tradition of dance music. The so-called “Belgian sound” began in none other than the roadside bars of the 40s and their dance floors, before DJs were invented. This is very well told in an excellent documentary, which I recommend, entitled The Sound of Belgium (2012). Scenes such as the new beat or the EBM will emerge there, which splashed Valencia in the late 80s (if you don’t know this story, I recommend the book Cod!, by Luis Costa).
From this tradition arises the Belgian electronic music duo Ultra Sunn, which performs on November 22 in Madrid (Nazca Live) and the next day in Barcelona (LAUT). They practice a coldwave style with lyrics about bullying or anxiety that become dance floor anthems.
On Saturday in Pinto (Madrid), I recommend the Santuario festival to continue dancing: with Sisters of Mercy, Front Line Assembly, Linea aspera, Kite or Tempers. Latest entries.
Three recommended books
- ‘Theodoros’ by Mircea Cărtărescu (Impedimenta, trans. Marian Ochoa de Eribe). This great Romanian writer, of whom Impedimenta has published more than a dozen works, has written in Theodoros a novel (more than 600 pages) that wants to cover everything, from creation to the final judgment, linking the historical with the fantastic, the real with the phantasmagoric. Piedad Bonnett has said of him that he has a “utopian ambition” and Borgesian ambition. Already in bookstores.
- ‘Beyond whiteness’ by Jane Lazarre (the outskirts, trans. Blanca Gago). From the author of the essential essay on motherhood The maternal knot, This book comes with the subtitle “Memories of a White Mother of Two Black Children,” to emphasize the autobiographical perspective of a work written in 1996 and which is still relevant to read with a focus on persistent racism in the United States. Lazarre has written a prologue to the Spanish edition, in which he says: “History burns us like a burning knife.” Already in bookstores.
- ‘Pipas’ by Esther L. Calderón (Los Acesos y Pepitas de Calabaza). This is the first novel by the Santander journalist who is currently editor of the portal Uppers (she has previously worked at El Mundo and EFE), after having published some short stories. In it we return to the neighborhood bench, sitting on the backrest, with our feet on the seat, with nothing to do, cracking pipes on some afternoon in the nineties. It is fiction but it is also an expedition to a real past, in first person. What happened to the expectations of teenagers in the nineties? We will meet them in these pages, and when closing the book. Already in bookstores.
Three recommended films, by Javier Zurro
- ‘The girls of the station’. The Spanish audiovisual industry has taken a step forward and has decided that it is time to talk about abuse and consent. In recent months, several works have coincided that talk about it as Want, by Alauda Ruiz de Azúa or I am Nevenka, by Icíar Bollaín. Now it is Juana Macías who talks about a terrible real case, that of the abuse of warded minors. It is based on a real case and has a wonderful cast of young actresses. By the way, its director Juana Macías and Icíar Bollaín visit us at elDiario.es next Tuesday. in a meeting with members.
- ‘Timeshare’. I have a soft spot for Olivier Assayas and the actor Vincent Macaigne. Their union in the excellent series Irma Vep It made me fly and in this film it doesn’t even come close to that level, but I like how Assayas has found his alter ego to talk about his traumas and fears. Here, those of a writer in the middle of a pandemic with echoes of Rohmer’s cinema.
- ‘I prefer to condemn myself.’ Margarita Ledo is one of the most important non-fiction directors in Spanish cinema in recent years. He made it clear with Nation and he does it again now with I prefer to condemn myself a work with all its hallmarks that once again delves into topics such as machismo and lack of freedom. Here thanks to the true story of the trial of a shellfish harvester from the Ferrol estuary during the dictatorship, in 1972.
Three plans for the weekend, by Laura G. Higueras
- Estepa Mantecado Museum (Seville). Since supermarkets have been anticipating Christmas for weeks now by bringing out nougats, advent calendars and polka dots, we will also have to open our mouths to the mantecados. It turns out that the old Convent of Santa Clara de Estepa can visit how these delicious Christmas sweets are made.
- Collection of Funeral Cars (Barcelona). And from the Christmas spirit to a very crazy (and funereal) collection. The Montjüic Cemetery houses this hearse museum which has 13 of them and six accompanying carriages, which help to understand how our ancestors transported their deceased to the cemetery. The more than 2,000 funerary books that it houses in its library explain the rituals practiced by different civilizations, with a special focus on the Egyptian one. There are guided tours every Saturday.
- ‘Come from away’ (Madrid). The 9/11 attacks caused many planes to be stranded in the air, with nowhere to land. 7,000 passengers ended up on Gander Island (Canada), where residents went out of their way to give them food, water and a house to stay in until they could take off again. His story is told in the musical Eat from away which houses the Marquina Theater in Madrid. Very funny and cool, the truth is that a little light within the tragedy is very appreciated. And also see the musicians on stage and not hidden in the pit.
Three exhibitions, by Jordi Sabaté
- ‘From Montmartre to Montparnasse. Catalan artists in Paris, 1889-1914’ (Barcelona). This exhibition, which will be at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona until March 29, 2025, offers a very extensive pictorial and documentary sample of the work of the Catalan colony in said city during the turn from the 19th to the 20th centuries. In it you can enjoy paintings by established artists such as Picasso, Rusiñol, Casas, Nonell, Anglada Camarassa, Clarà, Casagemas or Sunyer. But also from others less known such as Eveli Torent, Utrillo, Joan Sala or Gaspar Cassadó. Even some that are completely unknown. It has been curated by historians Vinyet Panyella and Eliseu Trenc.
- ’31 women. An exhibition by Peggy Guggenheim’ (Madrid). In 1943, Peggy Guggenheim She organized an exhibition in her New York gallery Art of This Century to demonstrate the power of female art, which included thirty-one artists, most of them linked to the surrealist movement and abstraction. In this way it was born Exhibition by 31 women, an exhibition in which artists such as Leonora CarringtonMeret Oppenheim or Dorothea Tanning. Now, the Recoletos Room of the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid hosts the work of those women until January 5, 2025.
- ‘World Press Photo 2024’ (Barcelona). The photographic exhibition World Press Photo 2024 exhibits in Barcelona the most impactful photographic works of the past year. It does so at the Center de Cultura Contemporània (CCCB) until December 15. This edition exhibits a total of 129 photographs, of the more than 61,000 that were submitted to the competition around the world, which address topics such as the environmental crisis, the international war conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine or the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan or Ethiopia. It also highlights gender issues and mental illness care.
Three readings
Revenge served cold. The writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature In 2004, Elfriede Jelinek was questioned at the time for the shadow of a possible tax crime of which she was acquitted. Now write about it.
Helpers against cloning. A group of acting actors went to the filming of a series and there they found that they were going to be scanned without telling them why. The goal: replicate them to hire fewer people.
Stay in a chapel. to the cities we care about sacrificing its historical heritage if, in return, more tourists arrive, wanting to stay in ‘charming’ places. The last attack against heritage.
Librotea’s recommendations
If you think that what is happening in the United States is a dystopia, Librotea offers you some readings that will make you tremble. On the other hand and to compensate, in addition to looking to the future, we can read books that make us learn from the past, from the hand of Antony Beevor.
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