Summer in the Salamanca Cave

La Cueva de Salamanca, "Salamanca Cave" is close to Los Dominicos and alongside the Villena Tower. A whole series of legends have grown up about it over the years and it is mentioned in the works of writers as prestigious as Cervantes, Quevedo and Rojas.

According to legend, here Satan himself taught fortune telling, palm reading, spells and black magic to 7 students for 7 years. Some say he took on the form of the sacristán (caretaker) of the ruined church during the lessons, others a hand on a chair, still others a male goat. However he dressed himself, all of the accounts agree on the students' tuition: one human soul. At the end of the 7 years, so the story goes, the students drew lots to see which of them would settle the bill by spending the rest of his life in the cave of Salamanca - in service to Satan.The Marques de Villena was chosen to stay with the demon (or the schoolmaster). Using the tricks that he had learned for evil, hid in a vat of waste water from the cave, and made them believe that he had made himself invisible. The Marques left the vat when the demon had gone, and escaped from the cave. But, on leaving, he lost his shadow which could have betrayed his flight, leaving it inside the cave.

From July 20th to September 22th La Cueva de Salamanca (Torre de Villena) will open every Friday and Saturday for a theatre performance called "La sombra del Marqués". You can go to see it on Saturday and Fridays at 21:30, 22:00, 22:30 and 23:00.

Also there will be different musical performances on Saturdays at 20:15.

Come and enjoy this mysterious place!

The Season "Jazz en la calle" had so far audience of 11600

A total of 11600 spectators have participated in the season ‘Jazz en la calle’ organised by Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura Foundation. During this season 10 concerts have been held in three different spaces of the city.Last Saturday the programme count with Jorge Navarro Quartet performance in the atrium of San Esteban Church, the same place chosen for the concert of Gonzalo del Val Cuarteto performed days before; around 1300 spectators has come to this place.
The Patio de Escuelas housed a total of 3000 people who enjoyed the music of Ray Gelato and Laika Fatien; the place that housed more audience was the Patio Chico where an audience of 7300 people went to see the performances of Antonio Ximénez- Fernando Sánchez Quinteto, Fernando Viñals, José María Carlés, Newport Jazz Quartet, Sedajazz Big Band y Stanley Jordan.

This weekend we can enjoy Jerry González Big Band and Chucho Valdés Quartet performances at Salamanca "Plaza Mayor" (Main Square)

Will Alhambra be one of the New 7 Wonders of the World?

More than 5,000 people joined hands around the Alhambra de Granada on Sunday 29th April, to embrace the monument and support it in its bid to become one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. The two chains of linked arms round the building was organised to stimulating voting for the monument.

The initiative was one of the many such projects being staged by public and private institutions to collect votes for making the huge stone structure one of the world's new group of most outstanding monuments.

The Alhambra Palace, built in the 13th and 14th centuries, is the last and most splendid of all the Arabian palaces to be built in Spain during 70 years of Moorish domination.

The Alhambra is one of the 21 monuments which voters around the world have chosen as the finalists. The Acropolis in Athens, the Eiffel tower in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome or the Great Wall in China are others of the chosen monuments. The final list will be announced in Lisbon on 7th July.

You also can give your vote through the foundation’s Internet page www.new7wonders.com and also through text messages from mobile phones

Un Picasso Friday, March 30 Metrópolis Teatro (with José Sacristán and Ana Labordeta) Teatro Liceo 9:00 p.m.

Jeffery Hatcher´s /Un Picasso/, adapted by Nacho Artime. Performers:
José Sacristán and Ana Labordeta. It is well known that one day, during
the infamous Nazi occupation of Paris, Picasso was ¨arrested¨ by a group
of German soldiers upon leaving the restaurant ¨Las Catalans,¨ where he
often ate and hung out with his friends.

The painter is taken to a
basement to be interrogated by an officer of the Ministry of Culture to
identify and certify that three of his paintings are authentic. The
year is 1941 and the genius of Picasso, who would turn sixty the
following day, is not only universally known at this time but also
highly immitated. Picasso is surprised to find that the German officer,
who is an art critic and a fan of his work and knows everything about
him, doesn´t actually want to know the authenticity of the three
¨Picazos¨ but rather wants to have them burned in a massive bonfire with
all of the other ¨degenerate¨ art hated by the landscape painter, Adolf
Hitler. The author uses this as his plot to set up an exciting cat and
mouse chase in which Picasso fights to save both himself and his work.
Truth and lies, art and politics, culture and consumption are all
analized from two different points of view. There is humor, poetry,
theatrics, and a magnificent means for the actors, representing very
different ideals, to shine brightly. We hope to bring spectators closer
to the world of Picasso, his childhood and his fame.

Julieta Venegas in Concert

3rd anniversary of the designation of Salamanca as venue for the 15th Latinamerican Summit of Heads of State and Government

Julieta Venegas: ‘Limón y Sal’

Due to the commemoration of the 15th Latin American Summit of Heads of State and Government some activities are going to be held, among them stands out the concert of the Mexican multi-Latin Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas ( Thursday 8th of March in Multiusos Sánchez Paraíso at 21:30 pm). She will perform songs from her last album ‘Limón y Sal’ and some old hits like ‘Lento’ o ‘Andar conmigo’


Although the artist’s musical career consits of only four albums, she has stood out notably in the Latin musical environment, especially in Spain in the wake of her last album ‘Si’ and her collaboration together with Paulina Rubio and Coti in the song ‘Nada de esto fue un error’.

Tickets can be bought in the box office of the Theatre Liceo or at Long Play ( Calle Rúa Mayor); the price is 12 euros in advance or 15 euros at the door. This will be the only concert of Julieta Venegas planned in Castille and León.

Tuesday 13th of February/ 'Knuckles'

On Tuesday 13th of February (CAEM Sala Marte 22:30 pm) you will have the chance of enjoying the Première in Spain of an exceptional show which has only been performed on
alternative festivals in the north of Europe: Knuckles. A celebration of the
crude poetry and psychological effect of a punch, of the efficient work of a
strangling...

Knuckles is all this and a lot more, a madness produced by the eccentric
artist Alex D´Electrique. Eight artists coming from different dutch
theatre companies came together to show us this choreography of grotesc
gags in which we can see 856 punches, some
broken furniture, made blue eyes... during the first thirty minutes
Knuckles is a "turbo-theatre", absurd humor and a pantomime through a dance
of punches in the style of cartoons. All this signed by the unmistakable stamp of Alex D´Electrique.

National Museum of Architecture opens its doors in Salamanca in 2009

The Salamanca Head Office of the National Museum of Architecture will open its doors in 2009, after the adaption of the historic building, the Banco de España, in the centre of the city.

This is how the Housing Minister, Maria Antonia Trujillo explained it, acompanied by the Employment Minister, Jesús Caldera, reminding that the Government invested 20 million euros in this project.

Trujillo emphasized in a press conference that the future National Museum of Architecture and Urbanism (MAU), which will divide its Head Offices between Salamanca, dedicated to Architecture, and Barcelona for the Urban section; ´intends to sensitise the citizens to the necessity of preserving this type of heritage as an element of cultural identity´.

The museum ´will be as much conventional as virtual´, since it will be provided with the most modern systems of study and cataloguing artifacts, as much in the museum´s head offices as in its Documentation Centre, according to Trujillo.

For the ministry, the election of Salamanca as the Head Office of the National Museum of Architecture vouches for the fact that the city is ´a mark of urban representation´ in that it joins a multitude of styles, and on top of that for being Heritage of Humanity since 1988¨

Nowadays Spain is ´one of the few western countries´, emphasised Trujillo, which does not have a museum of Architecture, with its creation, ´the goverment settled a historical debt with our urban and cultural heritage.´

For his part, Jesús Caldera pointed out that if there is one city that for its ´history and characteristics deserves the construction of a museum of architecture, it should be Salamanca.´