The thirteenth edition of our festival premieres at Naukas Bilbao 2022. As an appetizer, the comedian Raquel Sastre will offer an assortment of hors d’oeuvres that will be presented as follows in the science, scepticism and humour conference menu: A medley of superstitions on a bed of lime garlic with emulsion of chata murciana*. It […]

Her prominent white tuft of fringes and the punkish procrastination she uses to express herself – has any writer ever discussed pubic waxing more than she has – characterise Caitlin Moran’s style. She has been doing so ever since her Groucho-like manifesto of feral, Marxist feminism, ‘How to be a woman’, became a worldwide literary […]

Bilbao in the 1970s was a theatrical wasteland. Until a group of talented young people, eager to change the world, decided to gather and stir up several neighbourhood groups and social movements to make theatre a fun, famous and protest-oriented festival. As a result, the first independent Basque theatre group, Cómicos de la legua, was […]

One of Epicurus’ ‘Vatican Sentences’ reads: “I say that we must laugh as well as seek the truth”. As for the Cynics, it is not a burst of ironic laughter with a moralising intention but the natural expression of the pure pleasure of existence that comes from a joyful and fearless heart: free. It is […]

Cheesy and tacky are two words we often use. Sometimes in the same sentence. Although they could be considered antonyms, a sort of antagonistic Mrs Cheesy and Mr Tacky, this couple may have more in common than we think. We have summoned them to a date where tea will be served in amber Duralex cups, […]

CANCELLED «Kax-kax-kax! Knock-knock! Who’s there? The beginning of a joke. Knock-knock! Who’s there? Water breaks, and I come out into the world. Knock-knock! Who’s there? Another door. And another. What is life? A series of doors. Some open, some don’t, and sometimes we stand on the threshold, not daring to cross it. Knock-knock! Who’s there? […]

This pair of Basque scriptwriters, Guerricaechevarría and San José, is linked, in turn, to their fellow creative partners, Álex de la Iglesia and Borja Cobeaga. As a result of the work of the four of them, great comedies of Spanish cinema have been written, such as ‘El día de la bestia’, ‘Muertos de risa’, ‘Ocho […]

This discussion, entitled after Lope de Vega’s burlesque poem, will deal with cats – black or otherwise – in literature and the arts, and the long-suffering felines that have endured the company of authors who have turned them into fictional characters, if not forced to pose with them in photographs. Among the latter, Laura Fernández […]

In literature, Jose María Merino has cultivated all narrative genres, poetry, and essays. He has written novels, fairy tales, children’s and young people’s literature, and even oral narrative, a custom deeply rooted in León, the city he is closely linked to. But his hallmark is the short story, a genre he is one of the […]

Imanol Ituiño is an illusionist. According to the Tax Office, he is a playwright at times, a film and theatre director at other times, a caricaturist and an eccentric. He is passionate about magic viewed from all the senses. Practising it, knowing its history, spreading it. In his illusionist acts, he likes to pull some […]

There are dictionaries and thesauruses. They all describe (enclose) words (the outcome of the gaze) that reveal their power (the word’s ability to stop the wind) and their meaning (a paradox that no one has yet noticed). But only in some writing (risky thinking) is daring to exercise satire (realism wrapped in sandpaper). Among these, […]

Jonathan Coe belongs to that gifted British literary generation, including authors such as Amis, Barnes, McEwan, Ishiguro and Rushdie. Ever since his breakthrough novel ‘What a carve up!’ in 1994 – described by Rodrigo Fresán as “an approximation to the atmospheres of Evelyn Waugh filmed by a Terry Gilliam in the midst of the Thatcher […]

A new issue of this fixed festival section features a guest who chooses her ten favourite comedy sequences and discusses them with Juan Bas as they are being screened on stage. Once again, we will try to recreate the atmosphere of a Sunday afternoon film session, with its shared laughter: it’s all about comedy. It […]

Eduardo Halfon has an ambitious literary project in progress. It began with ‘El boxeador polaco’ and continues, several novels later, in the recently published ‘Un hijo cualquiera’. He writes about his origins, from his childhood curiosity about the number tattooed on the forearm of his Polish Jewish grandfather – who explained that it was a […]