Release date is 2026-05-03

Edició digital: Joan Queralt Gil

"La Sirena" by Josep Pin i Soler is a drama written in the late 19th century. Set between a Catalan fishing village and a Barcelona shipping office during the era of the clandestine slave trade, it follows the formidable captain Grabat (Pau Cendra), his steadfast daughter Marieta, and the vain armador Don Luisito, with the innkeeper Pitera and the crew’s families tightening the human knot around them. The likely focus is on honor, desire, and complicity as private grudges and colonial business interests push a community toward moral and personal reckoning.

The opening of the play shows a village beach preparing to bless the slave ship Sirena before departure. Amid teasing and small-town bustle, Pitera confronts Grabat about their affair and insinuates he killed her husband, pressuring him to promise marriage; he refuses, and she vows revenge while her brother Gatneu signs on as the ship’s cook. Don Luisito arrives to toast the voyage and clumsily court Marieta, drawing a protective rebuke from her father. The ship is blessed, farewells are tearful, and Grabat sails. The scene then shifts to the Barcelona office, where clerks and the cautious manager Joanet reveal uncertainty over the Sirena’s route and warn Don Luisito against troubling Marieta. When women from Port-nou—Marieta, her blind grandfather, and others—arrive seeking news and aid, Joanet distributes money and discreetly hints the vessel may have gone beyond the Cape toward East Africa, while everyone awaits word of its fate. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Barcelona: Tipolitografia de Lluís Tasso, 1891