In an 80-square-meter apartment in Madrid Square, six people lived: four siblings, mother, and father. At times, the grandmother was also there. It was a noisy house with a large terrace, and while some were returning from high school, a baby was crying. There is a 14-year age difference between the eldest brother and the youngest in the house. “It surprises me how, in the middle of that chaotic house, full of shouts and playing children, Pep could read, completely absorbed. He had a brutal capacity for concentration, it was as if he escaped.” Pep is Josep Ramon Cerdà (Palma, 1971), a playwright and professor. His younger sister, Margalida, known on social media as Madò Llucia, introduces us to him.

The Mallorcan playwright and writer Josep R. Cerdà has won the first Àngel Guimerà prize for dramatic literature with his work The second lineThe award was presented during the Night of Catalan Letters, recently held in the Oval Room of the MNAC in Barcelona. Created this year and endowed with 15,000 euros, the prize has become the highest-paid dramatic award in Spain and aims to strengthen the presence of theater within the Catalan literary scene.

They are two of the most important figures for understanding the current character of Palma, and they have much in common: significant education, time spent abroad, and a broad understanding of the context that surrounded them when, in the mid-20th century, they laid the foundations of this city as we know it today. However, there were also notable differences between the architect Josep Ferragut and the urban planner Gabriel Alomar. It is precisely these opposing viewpoints, despite their friendship, that have prompted the playwright Josep Ramon Cerdà to give voice to an unlikely encounter between the two on the night before Ferragut's death. This imagined dialogue is the twin of the play. The architect, which premieres on November 7th at the Teatre del Mar under the Produccions de Ferro label and starring Xisco Segura and Miquel Àngel Torrens.

There are no stories written in lowercase. All of them, regardless of their impact, contribute to the story written in uppercase, as can be seen in The architect, Performed at the Teatro del Mar, written by Josep Ramon Cerdà, directed by Rebeca del Fresno, and starring Xisco Segura, Miquel Àngel Torrens, Caterina Alorda, and Xen Garcinuño. A story within the history of this country, a brushstroke brimming with elements and countless corners and angles that, in some way, precisely depict the origins of who we are. A hypothetical conversation forms the backbone of the narrative, speculating on speculation, tourism and all its consequences, and modernization at any cost, against a mysterious backdrop that simultaneously lends substance to the story: the murder of one of the main protagonists, two renowned architects, one by name and the other by artist. With them, Cerdà weaves fiction from reality. A Pasolinian crime. forward the letter Unresolved, all shadow and without a single glimmer of light, it serves as a buttress for an entire ship that would become an immense, unattainable building, with the capparas of two ways of understanding a profession that is always sidelined. Ferragut was an exception and died in not so strange circumstances.

A conversation between Gabriel Alomar and Josep Ferragut, a tour of a city that has been left in the dark from the perspective of three women, and a triptych on the millennial generation where concepts such as 'toxic positivism' resonate. These are just three of the ingredients that make the new edition of the Festival de la Palabra, an initiative organized by Produccions de Ferro that takes place between the months of October and May, can be defined as "a festival of construction." "And that doesn't mean it's a festival under construction," Toni Gomila, director of Producciones de Hierro, suddenly clarifies in conversation with ARA Baleares, "but rather it invites us to reflect on how we build cities and how we relate to each other, all together, indirectly and sometimes in very obvious ways."

The twenty-seventh edition of the Teatro de Barra has teleported the comics to the venues, which suddenly become peculiar settings where the adventures of two unique protagonists unfold, who for the occasion were the children of a pencil and an eraser and are transformed as if for art. Thus, Batman, Robin, Tintin, Karmen and Teo are the protagonists of this exercise of sleight of hand. Without going any further, Josep Ramon Cerdà, author and director ofBetween two worlds, has imagined what an encounter would be like, as casual as it is causal, between two characters imagined and drawn by the author himself, Guillem March. They are Karmen and Batman in a situation in which he, amnesiac, doesn't quite know who he is, although he thinks he's the superhero, and she, very aware that she is a two-dimensional character, will make him come down to earth and put his head in its place, because one of the main virtues of the female protagonist is ability. Aina Zuazaga is a comic book Karmen, who seems drawn, so impeccably, fantastic, and Àlex Tejedor, more human, plays the tormented and somewhat confused character with the same consistency. A complex mix, without a single phrase that doesn't have solidity and specific weight, which doesn't allow you to miss a single one. Don't do it. It's a great little piece of jewelry.