If you want to have fun, there is a party for you. And there are even free ones (you take home a good dose of new punk-pop). If you want to go to the movies, we know what to recommend. If you prefer to stay home and read a good essay or three of the best recently published comics, that’s also the case. If you don’t know which exhibition to see, here are four.
a concert
Pop Generation Festival (Madrid). To discover a generation of cheeky pop and punk-pop groups, it is best to spend this weekend (Friday, November 29 and Saturday, November 30) at the Generación Pop festival at the Ouka Lele Youth Center in the Arganzuela district (Madrid). The first day is Amor Líquido (pay attention to the theme Metro Ibiza) and Tus Novias Indie (authors of the great song Bad streak about having a badass boyfriend). On Saturday, Alondra Bentley, El Científico Trovador and EducaPop play in the morning. At night: the Jerez duo Nadie Patín and the glam-pop Cometa. There are more activities you can consult here. And it’s free!
Three recommended books
- ‘You will feel the breath of Türkiye on the back of your neck’ by Javier Biosca (Península). Our colleague from the International section, Javier Bioscahas published this week a book on one of his areas of greatest knowledge, Erdogan’s Turkey. In this essay, he explains how the network of population control has been woven that has become an authoritarian government. You can read a preview chapter here: Erdogan and the secret operation to turn medicines into weapons for Syrian rebels. If you are in Madrid, on December 2 he will present it at FNAC Callao together with another colleague, the deputy director of elDiario.es, María Ramírez. Already in bookstores.
- ‘In a strange world. Anthology of LGTBIQ+ voices in Spanish’ (Dos Bigotes). The Dos Bigotes publishing house continues to publish very interesting essays and queer literature at a good pace. Here they bring together 22 authors from 17 countries. Among the names, Gabriela Jauregui, Alejandro Simón Partal (author of The plot, published by Caballo de Troya); Claudia Rodríguez (Mariana Enríquez has chosen her book Bodies to hate as guest editor at Barrett), Ángel Valenzuela, the writer from Equatorial Guinea Cristina Guadalupe Eyenga or Flavia Company. In bookstores from November 25.
- ‘Now is the time’ by Selma James (Bellaterra, trans. Eduardo Romero and Ainhoa Nadia Douhaibi). This book, from another always recommended publisher such as Bellaterra, takes us to the biography of Selma James (New York, 1930), an activist for the recognition of reproductive and care work. It is an anthology of his texts, some defend salaries for domestic work and others delve into socialist policies that can serve as an example. Already in bookstores.
Three recommended films, by Laura García Higueras
- ‘Where silence passes’. Sandra Romero directs this x-ray about what happens when care is not well received, and is even rejected. A very intelligent debut film that looks at the cruelty of the disease and how it can infect the patient themselves. The filmmaker does not hide when portraying that living can involve leaving family, friends and roots behind, without demonizing, infantilizing or romanticizing them. And you are going to allow me, but for me Sandra is already on the list of Spanish directors to follow, a lot, and very closely, in everything she does.
- ‘The daisies’. This punk satire that revolutionized the Czechoslovak New Wave in 1966 is one of the great works of feminist and avant-garde cinema. Groundbreaking, fun and current, it cost its director, Vera Chytilová, a censorship of up to seven years by the authorities of her country. Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová are the protagonists of this call to rebellion addressed to those who defend oppression in any form.
- ‘Moana 2’. In addition to giving us the great song How Far I’ll Go by Alessia Cara, Moana revealed to us in 2016 the story of this sailor who managed to discover why her village stopped being able to catch any fish and all the crops failed. Eight years later, the opportunity to meet her again comes (and his friend Maui) to see how he handles an unexpected call from his ancestors. That being said, if you haven’t seen it yet Wickeddo a double session and let yourself be carried away by this fantasy of a musical (and especially the loud voice of queen Cynthia Erivo).
Three plans for the weekend, by Laura García Higueras
- FIG Bilbao. This weekend this International Fair of Engraving and Art on Paper is being held in Bilbao, with more than 500 artists and 60 galleries. There will be printing workshops. In addition to having established names such as Chillida, Genovés and Tàpies, it will host the latest national and international trends. There will be prominence for large-format works and activities such as The Shadow of Stories, a demonstration by Karishma Chugani, in which she will draw with scissors to create elements of vegetation, fantastic characters and scenic elements.
- Sinister Fair (Madrid). The Satanists of Spain association organizes this meeting between the attached to satanism (defends equality, freedom and personal empowerment, as well as the non-denominational nature of the State). ‘Devil’s junk’ is the name they use to refer to ‘dark merchandising’: unique crafts based on satanic legends or stories, figures inspired by video games or fanarts (illustrations) with sinister or monster themes, and even crochet workshops.
- Gola (Barcelona). Until December 22, you can enjoy this show at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona) that is based on the idea of the throat understood as the need and vice of swallowing in excess everything we desire or that makes us desire. Oriol Pla (if you have not seen him yet in the wonderful series Yo, adicto, you should!), performs this function that mixes performance, theater, dance, jester and clown as a metaphor for the trap behind the illusion of power gobble up everything
Four exhibitions, by Jordi Sabaté
- ‘Torres-García. Between Noucentisme and the avant-garde (1891-1934)’ (Barcelona). The Sala Parés in Barcelona opens this Friday the 29th an exhibition commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of the creator of constructive universalism, who had a great pictorial activity in Spain. The exhibition, which includes 120 works including oil paintings, works on paper and toys from important collections in Paris, New York, Montevideo, Madrid and Barcelona, highlights the relevance of the relationship between Torres-García and Catalonia, as well as the relationship of the artist with the Sala Parés, the first gallery where he exhibited his entire artistic career (1897).
- ‘Utopia and Avant-garde. Russian Art in the Costakis’ Collection (Málaga). The Russian Museum of Malaga, once the rooms affected by the passage of DANA have been reconditioned at the beginning of November, will allow you to enjoy an exhibition that brings together 470 works of art and a hundred original documents by the Greek-Russian collector George Costakis, all of them housed in the MOMus-Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to delve into the visionary world of the Russian avant-garde. The works by Malevich, Rotchenko, Udalstova and Popova on display represent the embodiment of a radical rethinking of art and its role in society.
- ‘On abortion’ (Asturias). The Niemeyer Center in Avilés hosts, until next March 2, the first monographic exhibition that Laia Abril holds in Spain since winning the 2023 National Photography Award. She explores the repercussions of lack of access to safe, legal and free abortion: from forced motherhood to imprisonment and death. He does this through the images of women who have managed to survive clandestine abortions and are shown before his camera. “On Abortion” is the first chapter of a long-term project titled “A History of Misogyny.”
- ‘Imago Regis. Art and portrait in the painted documents in the Archivo de la Nobleza’ (Toledo). An exhibition at the Historical Archive of the Nobility based in Toledo collects a sample with 33 original hand-painted documents which makes visible the process of granting noble titles to citizens from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. The exhibition includes documents with painted portraits of kings over six centuries. They are pieces that allow you to certify the moment in which a person received the title of nobleman or hidalgo which, among other advantages, exempted them from paying certain taxes.
Three comics, by Gerardo Vilches
- ‘Gabriele Münter. The blue lands’ by Mayte Alvarado (Astiberri/Thyssen Bornemisza National Museum). Mayte Alvarado’s fascinating and personal approach to the pictorial universe and the life of the expressionist painter, one of the founders of the avant-garde group Der Blaue Reiter and not always recognized in all its importance. The author of the island reinterprets Münter’s original color palette and explores four stages of his life through four of his paintings, without a biographical purpose, but rather, to explore the light and spirit of his most contemplative works. The comic accompanies a monographic exhibition that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum he is dedicating to the artist.
- ‘The incorrigible ones. How I stopped drinking in New York’ by Julia Wertz (Errata Naturae). This could be classified as a graphic novel: a book of more than three hundred pages, in which Julia Wertz shamelessly, but also with a lot of humor, addresses a stage of her life in which she lived in New York and decided to do therapy to leave the alcohol. A precarious cartoonist, living in a basement that is more of a hideout, accompanied by the obligatory cat and surrounded by cartoonist friends and colleagues from Alcoholics Anonymous, Wertz resorts to the self-deprecation that classics of gonzo autobiography such as Joe Matt or Robert Crumb have used, but It refreshes with a touch of informative seriousness when necessary, in a story that is devoured without much effort.
- ‘Let There Be Light’ by Liana Finck (Red Fox Books). A hilarious and acidic badass rewriting of the Old Testament, drawn with punk scribbles and told under the premise that God is a woman. Far from falling into easy criticism of the patriarchal nature of the text, the author adopts an original and transgressive point of view, between the tender and the sacrilegious, and reinterprets the best-known passages. Under a deceptively innocuous appearance, Fink has signed one of the most interesting books on religion in recent times.
Three readings
Andrés Lima takes over the Civil War. We were at the rehearsals of the long-awaited play 1936, which is performed at the CDN starring Blanca Portillo. We spoke with the director about the relevance of the work.
Metaphors of the state of alert. The new, concrete and interesting publishing house La Tortuga Búlgara has sought out the current poets of Ukraine to translate and anthologize them, to listen to their raw and direct voices.
The Wu clan is now a tao. Nando Cruz recommends us let’s read the most unusual musical autobiography that you can find in bookstores right now and it explains why. It’s RZA’s, from Wu-Tang Clan.
Librotea’s recommendations
A steaming cup, a blanket and a book, what more could you ask for in December? The best of the year lists!
Every Friday morning Elena Cabrera works as a cultural prescriber in a bulletin that summarizes cultural news in a first part that highlights some of the stories published by the section that week. The newsletter has three fixed blocks: 3 section stories; 3 cultural plans chosen by Laura G. Higueras and 3 film recommendations chosen by Javier Zurro. In addition, the last newsletter of the month Gerardo Vilches chooses three comics.
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