Ángel Alonso, co-founder of Barcelona’s Sala Villarroel theatre, has died in the city aged 84. His work shaped the venue’s programming from its foundation in 1972 and helped establish it as a platform for alternative and socially engaged theatre.

For Barcelona theatre-goers and practitioners, Alonso’s death removes a figure closely linked to the city’s cultural life during Spain’s transition from dictatorship to democracy. He also directed nearly 80 productions, wrote around 20 original works and created television programmes for RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster.

“Close to the working class.”

That was how Sala Villarroel described its origins, according to El País. Alonso helped turn the venue into a space for companies from Catalonia and elsewhere in Spain, with a programme associated with left-wing and libertarian ideas.

A theatre active through political change

Sala Villarroel survived a bombing in 1977 during a performance of La sangre y la ceniza, by Alfonso Sastre and staged by El Búho, according to the source material. The incident occurred during the transition to democracy, when the theatre hosted work connected to social and political debate.

Alonso later reached a far larger audience with La extraña pareja, produced by Focus and starring Paco Morán and Joan Pera. The production opened in 1994, ran for five years, exceeded 2,000 performances and attracted more than one million spectators, Focus recalled through El País.

Work for stage and television

His stage work included Historias de la puta mili, adapted from Ivà’s anti-militarist comic strips, as well as adaptations of Madame Bovary and Albert Camus’s The Stranger.

  • He directed nearly 80 theatre productions.
  • He wrote around 20 original works.
  • He directed dramatic series for RTVE in Catalonia.
  • He created the children’s programme Planeta imaginari, later adapted for Spanish-language broadcasting across Spain.

In a 2025 profile, elDiario.es reported that Historias de la puta mili drew 500,000 spectators during five continuous years on tour. The same profile described Alonso as having lived in Barcelona throughout his life.

Reported by russpain.com, Source Text Link, Jordi Sabaté, Jacinto Antón, Margot Molina, Pablo Ley, ANTONI PLANAS, europapress.es, AGENCIAS, comparandonos.com.