Countdown for the recovery of the Texas
A popular party will mark the start of a new project that will preserve two cinemas and will have a theatre space of 200 seats.
A new artistic project will fill the old Texas cinemas with life, in its new stage Espai Texas. All the details of the proposal will be announced at a big popular party to be held on Saturday 18 March from 12.30 pm at the intersection between Passeig Sant Joan and Carrer Sant Antoni Maria Claret, with the participation of the presenter Marc Giró, the percussion band La Diabolica de Gràcia and the company The Felieuttes.
What is known at the moment is that the Espai Texas will maintain two of its cinemas, showing films in Catalan, either because it is the language in which the film was shot or dubbed or subtitled in this language, and there will also be a 200-seat theatre and a gastronomic area. To make this possible, the two companies behind the recovery of this emblematic part of the Gràcia neighbourhood want to involve the citizens, and especially the residents of Gràcia.
Texas opened in 1919 on the former site of the La Valkyria Recreational Centre. During the Civil War it became a children's canteen, and from 1940 it recovered its cultural activity under the name of Cine Texas. The cinema had a capacity of 660 seats. After its golden age, in the mid-1990s it was transformed into a multiplex cinema, the Lauren Gràcia. Filmmaker Ventura Pons reopened them after the multiplex went bankrupt, but they closed again in 2020. Throughout its 110 years of activity as a cinema, the Texas has been an indisputable point of reference in Barcelona's popular culture.
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