| Theatre
‘Z/B. Zweig/Bernardos’

Jaume Capó is the author of Z/B. Zweig/Bernardos, a production by La Fornal d’Espectacles in collaboration with Teatre Ponent of Catalonia, directed by Frederic Roda and performed by Òscar Intente and Joan Gomila

In February 1942, at the height of the Nazi domination of the Second World War, two renowned European intellectuals exiled in Brazil – the Austrian Stefan Zweig and the Frenchman Georges Bernanos – have arranged a meeting at the Frenchman’s estate in Barbacena. Zweig, of Jewish origin, has been banned by the Nazis, but has never openly confronted them. Bernanos, a monarchist and ultra-conservative Catholic, has exchanged admiration for fascism for a harsh condemnation after witnessing in Mallorca, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the violence of the military coup plotters with the connivance of the church.

Zweig and Bernanos, despite not knowing each other personally, share humanism and freedom of thought, although not always with affinity given their antithetical characters. Talking about dehumanization in times of conflict, the role of the intellectual, nationalism and Europeanism, uniformity and social and cultural globalization, they embark on a conversation that is both enlightening and hopeless.