The year 2026 began with the biggest worries about life in history, according to the Black Opinion Barometer of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS).
42.6% of Spaniards consider access to a home to be a major national problem. These facts appear more often in fiction, a fertile portrait of contemporary men.
Novels, movies, series, discos… The housing crisis is told in stories through sloppy houses, shared flats, empty neighbors and ruined neighborhoods. El Cultural interviews writers Rosa Ribas and Rodrigo Gervasi, as well as Pepón Montero and Juan Maidagán, guests of the series Poquita Feover this crisis.
Together with the expert Javier Burón and the filmmaker José Luis Guerin, who in the documentary History of the Good Valley compare us with urban desmanes. Thus follows the outline of his emblematic film In the construction industry (2001), about what Laura Chivite reflects on these pages.
The writer emphasizes that life is an urgent subject that we must pursue by reporting and denouncing as many means as possible.
And here we go:
LETRAS. When he traveled to Spain in 1840, the French writer Théophile Gautier assured us that visiting us was a “dangerous and novel enterprise”, he was described as an exotic king. Meanwhile, in Juan Valera, questions were tied to the lions. However, time has shown that Spain is not that different, given the Francoist propaganda. Historian Nigel Townson is now publishing a volume to demonstrate this.
ART. The austere and introspective abstraction of Jordi Teixidore is expressed in geometric shapes and planes, like discrete attempts at a church. We talk to the painter who is preparing a complete exhibition for Sala Alcalá 31, sixty years of painting in 70 works celebrating the pictorial idea of the esthete.
MUSIC. Orquesta Nacional and Fundación Juan March are together for one more year at Festival Focus, an edition dedicated to Spanish composers forced to rise to the top of the country in the middle of the civil war. Mexican Carlos Miguel Prieto, nephew of María Teresa Prieto, opens the program, which also includes songs by María de Pablos, Rosa García Ascot and Montserrat Campmany, among others.
THEATER. Chéjov, de la estepa rusa and A garden of trees. Juan Carlos Pérez from Zdroj transported us to Russia in 1904 with this story of a noble family expelled from paradise. Ignacio García May signs this version, which could be played at the Fernán Gómez Theater from February 15 to April 12.
CINEMA. Este viernes se estrena Hellboy. twisted man a film that follows the superhero epic of previous adaptations of Mike Mignola’s character and offers an all-black series hard boiled: a recital of short sentences, cruel humor, moral ambiguity, violent methods and hellish first-hand knowledge.
SCIENCE. Historian of science José Manuel Sánchez Ron explains how previously feared and mythical solar eclipses are now scientifically explained, and details the exceptional total eclipse of August 12, 2026, which will be visible across much of Spain.
All this and much more in the next issue of El Cultural. On sale from this weekend, February 6, in stores for €2.50. Available a day in advance for digital PDF subscribers. Subscribe here for 25 euros per year.
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