Not far from the Rambla, but away from the crowd, the Antic Teatre celebrates an expectant and combative Off Sant Jordi. On the small terrace of the bar of the old 17th century palace there are no authors signing (the Calders bookstore preferred to stay close to home this year after the Monday rains), but there is Lo mercadet from the neighbor On The Road, which sells second-hand copies hand, and the yayas have come, a group of neighbors (and two neighbors) over 65 years of age from the neighborhoods of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and La Ribera who for twelve years have given life to the community artistic project directed by Marta Galán Sala and Montserrat Iranzo.
“When it started, Aurora, 86 years old, spent the day sitting at home in front of the TV. She didn’t move. Now they call her and she says ‘I can’t, I have a rehearsal.’” And like her, many more”, says Semolina Tomic, the soul of the Antic Teatre, while she has coffee with Maria Mas, “86 and a half years old”, former president of the Casc Antic Neighborhood Association. “This is a unique project and it must be defended; If it is lost, the essence of many things is lost,” she says. And they are going to fight it.
María Isabel, Maritilla in art, is 77 years old, “but inside I feel like I am 40. I took six pills, soon I went to four and now only one for tension and another for the stomach.” She is one of those who signs and dedicates copies (few, it stopped being new a year ago) of Deixar de prende 4 pastilles, the book about the project of which they are protagonists. And then, together with Montserrat, former dancer, Mari Cruz, Aurora… will take the stage of the theater, where to celebrate the opening of the Antic un Sant Jordi 21 years ago (“Semolina Tomic was scary at first, with her Pipi Longhunter braids,” remembers Aurora) they have placed objects that evoke her history.
Cases of beer from the bar with which they finance themselves, a flower pot with plants from the garden or hanging clothes that they have used in a show. They move, they gesture, they outline a dance step, and at the end, amidst applause, one of them exclaims: “For a moment it seemed to me that there was no world, only the one here.” Another asks the public to do everything they can so that this unique place that brings together old and young does not close. Hanging from the ceiling, a 2027 calendar reminds you that the clock is ticking. and that if the expropriation procedures are not accelerated so that the City Council can acquire it, as approved last year, they will have to go to the streets.
