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The Moratín theater, located at 246 Muntaner Street, came to the world of Barcelona entertainment thanks to the playwright Jaime Salom Vidal. It came to replace the defunct Aristos movie theater, which had been inaugurated on Friday, December 17, 1943 and which had closed its doors on Sunday, July 31, 1966.
The playwright Jaime Salom Vidal had announced in 1966 his desire to become a theater entrepreneur and Barcelona’s Moratín was one of his first objectives.
With the closure of the cinema hall, Salom wanted to revitalize a theater that was dormant in the city of Barcelona and dedicate himself, apart from writing plays, to the world of entertainment. He therefore contacted the interior designer Manolo Muntañola i Tey to design a project to convert the old Aristos cinema into the new Moratín theater.
The new location had some problems opening its doors. As Carme Tierz recalls in her book Barcelona City of Theatres, a resident of the building reported the noise of an air extractor to ventilate the room, which had been installed on the roof of the building on Muntaner Street.
In the beginning, Jaime Salom’s intention was to inaugurate the theater with Joan Oliver’s work Per logar hi cadires, written in Catalan. And well because of the subject or because it was written in Catalan, it was censored.
This circumstance forced the official opening to be delayed with a cocktail party held on December 17, days before the premiere with the actors of another play, including Vicente Parra.
The Moratín theater was finally inaugurated on December 23, 1967 with the presentation of the Luis Prendes company with the world premiere of the comedy Cara de Plata by Valle Inclán and with the presentation of the guest actor Vicente Parra and directed by José María Loperena.
That day, La Vanguardia, above the advertisement, informed all viewers who had previously purchased tickets for both the afternoon and evening performances to proceed to change the date or their money would be refunded, since in principle the first advertisement for inauguration had been scheduled for a few days before.
The true explosion of the Moratín theater took place on March 22, 1968 with the premiere of Jaime Salom’s own play La Casa de las Chivas, which not only received a whopping 433 performances at that time, but also became the teacher of a genius.
La Casa de las Chivas was directed by José María Loperena and performed by Estanis González and Terele Pávez. Salom treated with great social realism a break with the social schemes of the moment. Set during the civil war, the action took place in a village, with two sisters of the protagonists and with the arrival of republican soldiers who were fighting on the front near the town.
Subsequently, the Moratín theater offered countless plays by different authors, including Jaime Salom’s own:
Subsequently, and to create a love among young audiences, it began programming performances dedicated to children on Sundays and holiday mornings.
On March 6, 1973, while the sets for William Shakespeare’s play Macbett were being prepared, a fire broke out in the premises’ electrical installation, forcing the premiere to be postponed. A cast of extraordinary artists participated, with Amalia Gade, Antonio Ferrandis, Enrique Suitart, Guillermo Marin and Montserrat Carulla.
The next day in La Vanguardia an announcement informed viewers that the premiere of the work would not take place until Friday the 9th. The premiere was a great success.
The decade of the 70s was very bad for the theater in our city and the Moratín, like other existing theaters of that time, had a hard time maintaining itself as it suffered a drop in spectators, which forced it to close on Sunday, June 16, 1974 with the representation of the Luis Prendes company in Stay for breakfast by Cooney and Stone, with María Jesús Sirvent and José Félix Bresso.
El Moratín thus closed its theatrical period after a successful period of artistic production. From that moment it tried to try its luck as a cinema within the category of special room, the name at that time adopted by the previous art and rehearsal rooms.
On Friday, September 6 of that same year, on page 28 of La Vanguardia, the Moratín Company included an advertisement in which it bid farewell to the Publi-Cinema cinema and announced to viewers an upcoming Inauguration.
On Friday, September 13, he appeared again in La Vanguardia, announcing the premiere of the film L’Invitation, Jury Prize at the 1973 Carmes Festival, by Claude Goretta, with the assistance of the actor Jean-Luc Bideau.
Later, the bad years that movie theaters suffered came and the cinema had to close, however, the place continued fighting to survive within the world of entertainment, first becoming the Belle Epoque music hall between 1982 and 1995.
And, again, after closing its doors, its new managers turned it into Luz de Gas, an emblematic concert hall and nightclub in Barcelona. Decorated like a classic rococo style theater, after the concerts, it opens as a nightclub.
