Love to Death: Theater of the Embrace

I recently watched the documentary 'Eloy de la Iglesia, addicted to cinema'. A harrowing tale of a director who took his artistic, personal, and ... political convictions to the limit, and I think even beyond. Those were tough times, the end of Franco's regime, the transition, and the beginning of democracy, and he chose to bring to the screen those whom no one wanted to see, the forgotten ones.

It's 2026 and Eloy de la Iglesia feels much less anachronistic than a theater critic taking notes in Teatro Echegaray while watching 'Love (to) Death', the show brought by the company Las Lunas to the Málaga Theater Festival. A text and performance show aimed at making people feel, at storming the auditorium with a reality that touches the creators themselves. The reality of the Spanish youth, exhausted, unrewarded, without opportunities.

I am 42 years old, and it wasn't long ago that I was the young one, amidst crises, real estate booms, preventive wars. I was young when the term 'mileurista' became widespread. And I never thought that twenty years later, the youth would be even worse off. We continue to hear the same problems, which are now accumulating across different generations, from millennials to Generation Alpha, and nothing changes. And I agree with where Luna Navajas and Ana Luna Moya are focusing: it's no longer just a structural problem, it is also a problem of empathy. Now, the one who raises your rent is not only the market but also your neighbor, the one who also has a child who won't be able to move out before 30. Money now dominates all our conversations, and meanwhile, we have our youth, and not so young, struggling to get their heads out of the trash of false self-employment, shared apartments, and master's degrees with no future.

'Love (to) Death' is a text and performance show aimed at making people feel, at storming the auditorium with a reality that touches the creators themselves

Conceived in the artistic residency of the Ágora program by the Junta de Andalucía, Las Lunas try to vent and show all that accumulated discouragement in a journey of quick and effective resources, like an endless TikTok scroll. And it has its moments artistically with that metaphor of garbage bags that end up devouring everything: work, sex, family... For Las Lunas, everything is already decay except for friendship. That's why I understand that it is also almost a therapeutic work personally. But I missed more substance, more transgression, I missed revolution. What's the use of having a space to bring out the blushes if in the end, you receive applause from the one who will later raise your rent? The moments of scant explicit political criticism were the ones I liked most, with that resource of Ayuso's voice contrasting the ruler with the ruled. Young people must use theater to anger the audience, not just to move them. "The time has come to lose our fears, to lose them forever," says José Sacristán in the movie 'The Deputy'. And to understand the parallel, watch it in its historical context.

I also thought that a hug was a revolutionary act. But now I think it's not enough. However, it's a good starting point for Las Lunas. Long live the youth who create, who are not afraid to denounce, to live through art. That's what it's there for.