The cultural capital of Igualada, exercised during 2022, has paid off. Overnight, a range of colorful murals emerged on some of its facades. “Now it’s fashionable,” a proud shopkeeper tells us, pointing to the enormous mural that embellishes the Plaza del Rei in the capital of Anoia. Igualada is timidly positioned among the cities with routes of murals. The “fashion”, to which the shopkeeper refers, is liked in the city and not a few of its neighbors want more murals. Walls, there are plenty.
One of the murals that opened fire, the one in the aforementioned royal square, if no one remedies it, its days are numbered. It was already born with the “ephemeral” label, because they want to build a block of flats on the site where it stands. “I signed a paper agreeing that it could be destroyed,” says its author, local artist Albert Álvarez. The neighbors defend their permanence, but they paint rough.
The idea came from the production company Un Capricho de Producciones: “I was commissioned one of ten murals for a television series.” Coinciding with the cultural capital, Albert thought of an element to give it meaning, and from there the mural was born, a tribute to bookstores, inspired by the now-defunct Cal Jordana.
Albert’s cooperative has been painting murals for more than twenty years. Before, they painted hot air balloons for one of the companies that builds them, Ultramàgic, also located in Igualada.
The mural of the Joan Mercader institute is also by Albert. In fact, there are not a few schools in the city that display these samples of urban art. Albert does not rule out that Igualada will eventually become a city of murals, but he sees it far away: “To turn it into a tourist attraction, at least a couple or three more murals would be needed, by different, modern, advanced artists.”
The Igualadina Núria Riba has become the queen of the city’s murals. There are no more and no less than five of hers and all of them are already part of the city’s scenery. The Igualadinos appreciate them. It all started with a scholarship granted by the city to promote a painting exhibition.
Núria is part of the castelera gang Els Moixiganguers, and from there she was inspired for her art. Not satisfied with the small format canvas, he tried a mural of a castle, and succeeded.
Then, with the arrival of the cultural capital of 2022, he participated in a contest where the citizens chose the great cultural events that would make up the capital and his project of three murals was chosen. Thus, coinciding with its bicentennial, one of these murals recreates the Tres Tombs festival, another is dedicated to the correfoc and its devils and the last one wanted to use it for hot air balloons, of great tradition in Igualada, but due to “popular pressure” it was he opted for the Three Kings festival, which is also deeply rooted.
To round off the quartet of murals, the City Council commissioned a fifth, which adorns the walls of a recently opened civic center. He has been left with the thorn of the balloons, but he understands that he has to give way to other artists (“I don’t want to monopolize the walls of Igualada”) and from his studio he promotes new talents.
Those of Albert and Núria are not the only murals in Igualada. One of the most veteran looks at one of its entrances, on the Cal Badia estate. On the other hand, one of the areas where they are proliferating the most is in the old Rec neighborhood, whose aesthetic invites art.
The urban art of Igualada does not end here, the city promotes the Electra Festival project, which consists of decorating electricity boxes, turning them into small and daring murals.
The mural by the Barcelona artist Joan Fontcuberta deserves a special mention, a tribute to the workers of the covid pandemic, which harshly punished the city. It corresponds to a ceramic work made of small photographs and arranged in eleven panels permanently installed in the central square of Cal Font in Igualada.
