Cultura

In 1973, the advertiser Lluís Bassat was walking down Consell de Cent street when, at the height of the Sala Adrià, which was run by Francesc Mestre, an exhibition by Serra de Rivera caught his attention. Inside awaited Bañista, an enigmatic painting (the naked figure of a woman in a flooded room who sinks an arm into the water that reaches halfway up her leg) that not only stole his heart but changed his life. That afternoon he not only left with the canvas under his arm but also with 35% ownership of the gallery (he later convinced seven friends to acquire another 35%), and until 1980, when it closed its doors, they organized more than eighty exhibitions. “There I began to get to know the artists; and with my wife, Carmen, we bought one or two works from each of them. And so, almost unintentionally, we built a collection that today has more than 3,000 works.”

Felix Gonzalez-Torres -so, without accents and with a hyphen to join his two last names into one- was a child when, in 1971, he was in Madrid for the first time, where he arrived from Cuba, sent by his family to keep him away from the Castro regime. Twenty years later, in 1991, he returned and consummated a “sweet revenge,” it is not known against what or whom, which now, more than three decades later, is echoed by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

The workers of the Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona have started an indefinite strike this Tuesday to protest the lack of progress in the negotiation process with the City Council regarding their working conditions, and 37 of the 40 centers in the city have not opened; only the libraries of Collserola-Josep Miracle, Canyelles-M. Àngels Rivas, and Joan Miró have remained operational.

The Madrid Municipal Police have arrested playwright and theater director Ramón Fernández Paso as the alleged perpetrator of a sexual assault on a minor at the intersection of Alcalá Street and Paseo del Prado in Madrid, according to police sources.

Timothy Garton Ash (London, 1955) has documented live the European history of the last four decades from his dual role as historian and journalist. Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, he has outlined in his books a history of the European present that he has compiled in books such as Freedom of Speech, Facts Are Subversive, or his own History of the Present, all published by Tusquets. A representative of the old enlightened liberalism, he studied Modern History at Oxford, where he became interested in the German resistance to Hitler, which led him to live in Berlin and to gain an in-depth knowledge of the countries of the former Eastern Europe. Precisely in his book The Magic Lantern (Taurus) he narrates the moment when Eastern Europe on the other side of the Berlin Wall begins to falter, a moment he experiences firsthand, including the first free elections in Poland.

Faceless women… or rather with their faces hidden by hair, veiled by dresses, or even covered by a still life. The Polish painter Ewa Juszkiewicz presents about twenty unsettling portraits at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, from this May 26th until next September 6th, that will not leave visitors indifferent.

There are very few jazz musicians left who deserve to be considered giants. After the death, early this morning, of saxophonist Sonny Rollins, the representation of the golden era of the genre is limited to figures such as pianist Herbie Hancock (Chicago, 1940) or the…

That one of the most anticipated literary debuts of the year features a tradwife as the protagonist is not something that should be surprising. For those unfamiliar with the term, this anglicism is an abbreviation of traditional wife, or in other words, traditional housewife, and this is how Natalie Heller Mills, a character in the novel Yesteryear (AdN) by Caro Claire Burke, who has just arrived in bookstores stirring much excitement among readers, refers to herself. It is no wonder, as actress Anne Hathaway, who these days can be seen on the big screen starring in The Devil Wears Prada 2, has purchased the film rights to turn the novel into a movie, playing the role of Natalie herself. She will thus go from being a promising girlboss ready to succeed at Runway magazine, directed by Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), to quite the opposite.

The Catalan viol player Jordi Savall received last night in Munich the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 2026, one of the most prestigious awards in the world of classical music. The ceremony took place at the Prinzregententheater, with a concert by Hespèrion XXI and La Capella Reial de Catalunya under his direction.

“Welcome to Cannes!” said the head of the prestigious French festival, Thierry Frémaux, yesterday to Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo as they climbed the steps of the Palais. Shortly after, Los Javis excitedly took the stage to receive the award for best direction for La bola negra, a distinction they shared with the Polish Pawel Pawlikowski, author of Fatherland, a beautiful and harsh black-and-white portrait of Germany after World War II through the figure of the writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika.