The historic Comedia cinema will close this coming Sunday, January 14. It was located on a luxury corner, Passeig de Gràcia and Gran Vía. Could you ask for a better place to have a movie theater? No, but that was when that area had become Barcelona’s artery in terms of cinemas, a nerve center displaced right now from no one really knows where. When it became a multi-venue it also had an entrance directly on Gran Via, where another of the great venues of this city survived, but has since fallen, the Coliseum.. He did not fall physically, he still exists, but in recent years he has dedicated himself to theater, musicals, concerts or the presentation show of Quentin Tarantino’s book last year. So the Comedia – five theaters – was the last bastion of what was for a long time a privileged place to open successful cinemas.
On Passeig de Gràcia there were rooms like Fantasio, located at number 69. A name that seemed to evoke the comic Spirou and Fantasio. Of course, the Franco-Belgian comic debuted in 1938 and the cinema was built in 1931. In the early 70s it became the property of the Balañá chain and closed its doors on August 30, 2000.
Two years earlier, screenings at the Fémina cinema had begun, which could be accessed via Passeig de Gràcia or Diputació. It was a luxurious hall with 820 seats that also passed to the Balañá in 1971. But things were not looking good with the first major crises in the sector: around 1987 its closure was announced. It did not become effective, but in 1991 a fire – which some considered suspicious – destroyed the cinema. At the top, touching Diagonal, was the Savoy cinema (1935-2001), more discreet and narrow, but also endearing, and the cinematographic street par excellence was completed with the Publi (1932-2005), a paradise for cinema films. author when censorship was still raging.
The abundant Rambla
Next to what is now the luxury shopping street is the Rambla de Catalunya, where cinemas also abounded. The Alcázar, one of Stanley Kubrick’s favorites to premiere his films in Barcelona, was located between Consell de Cent and Diputació, at number 37, and was extraordinarily equipped: one of the most comfortable and where the best projections were possible. It opened in 1939, but it had already been a movie theater for years under the names Lido and Actualidades. Do you know how many seats it had then? 1,600! Only 200 less than the Urgell cinema, the largest in the city. It moved to Balaña at the end of the 40s, the capacity was reduced and it survived until 2005.
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A little further down, at number 23 Rambla de Catalunya, another technically impeccable room was opened, the Club Coliseum. Owned by the same chain, Balañá, it lasted 36 years; It closed permanently in 2014 and was something like a room attached to the Coliseum.
It was the last cinema on Rambla de Catalunya, since the Alexandra (1949-2013) and the three rooms that were in the building had previously closed, at number 90, and accessed through the same spacious lobby, Alex 1 and Alex 2 (two mini-rooms opened in 1980) and Alexis, another historic venue: inaugurated in 1954, it became one of the emblems of Círculo A, art and essay exhibitor; It had only 143 seats and the ‘happenings’ on Saturday mornings with screenings of ‘The Night of the Living Dead’ are an indelible living history of this city that little by little is running out of rooms to show films, or as we have understood the rooms until now.