Barcelona’s summer festival kicks off

Barcelona’s Festival Grec kicked off on Tuesday evening with Catalan-French outfit Baró d’evel collaborating with a host of local talent to perform ‘A tocar!’ (‘Let’s Play!’). Opening night at the open-air Teatre Grec saw a socially-distanced audience of front line coronavirus workers – cleaners, public transport staff, health workers, police, market workers and volunteers among others – treated to a spectacle that invites you to “get up and not give up in difficult times”.

The show, which featured a large majority of local artists, including Frederic Amat, Raül Refree, Lina, Tortell Poltrona (picture) and Imma Colomer, was “like an exorcism that helps us see the light of summer nights and get out of the darkness,” according to Festival Director Cesc Casadesús. For him, Baró d’evel were the perfect artists to get the festival underway. “I knew they would be sensitive to the situation, and they would do something very delicate, very poetic and very respectful, and it has been a success.”

The performance was a montage of previous works, adapted and arranged to be understood in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Baró d’evel co-founder Blaï Mateu addressed the audience beforehand: “Art must make the collective imagination bigger, to allow us to invent or look for different ways of working. Making a community could be the solution to it all.” The 2020 Festival Grec is set to run throughout the year, with most of the 108 events due to take place in July.