In February 2000, just hours before the Valencian election campaign began to restore him as head of the Generalitat, Eduardo Zaplana attended a ceremony at the Sagunt Roman Theater with the actress and singer Irene Papas. The event aimed to unveil one of the era’s megaprojects, the City of Performing Arts, a bold move intended to elevate the Valencian Community onto Spain’s cultural avant-garde map. The ceremony marked a public moment in the bid to position Valencia as a cultural hub, underscoring the city’s ambitions for a major cultural complex.
Irene Papas, the great lady of Greek theatre, has died at the age of 96.
At that moment, Zaplana’s association with the City of Performing Arts seemed strategic: a renowned actress and international figure accompanied him on the eve of elections, signaling a long-term investment narrative. The project carried an estimated outlay of around 12,000 million pesetas and was pitched as a keystone for a district that the administration believed held the potential to transform Valencian cultural life, turning a historic industrial area into a beacon of theatrical education and high-caliber performances.
The foundation backing the project, funded by the Generalitat, paid Papas nearly 180,000 euros annually for her advisory role, independent of any fees earned from her work as an actor or director. The aim was to refurbish a legacy of steelworks into a cultural complex — turning former industrial buildings into a center for theater education and remarkable performances while reimagining the executives’ chalets, workshop spaces, a casino, and a police precinct as part of the cultural project.
However, the Generalitat faced financial strain as the foundation incurred significant debt. A 2008 Síndic de Comptes report noted investments of approximately €21 million for rehabilitating the old steel warehouse, with long-term debt reaching about €25.5 million.
Around the same period, it was anticipated that leading figures from the natural and cultural worlds would join the project, including notable names such as Luis Pasqual, Nuria Espert, and other celebrated artists. The project’s ambition was clear: to attract top-tier talent and establish Valencia as a global cultural magnet.
2.5 million across six performances
Yet Irene Papas remained the marquee star of the venture. In 2001, more than 2.5 million euros were spent on six performances of Las Troyanas, a production staged by a Greek playwright, during the opening phase of the theater city. The Nau, the lone landscape component of the Theatre City, was the only element to emerge into public view from that initiative.
The staged history of Las Troyanas illustrates the broader strategy to cultivate the culture that Valencian rulers cherished before the 2008 financial crisis. Despite Papas’ international prestige and the involvement of notable groups such as La Fura dels Baus and Calatrava, the production, which premiered in September 2001 and drew on Euripides’ universal themes, initially failed to attract strong critical or audience attention.
Nevertheless, the plans persisted. Valencia’s dream of a theater-centric “Las Troyanas” tour to Rome, coordinated with the Consell’s principal diplomatic office and the Tor Vergata University campus, proceeded through 2003. An accident during dismantling caused a serious injury, and the project’s elaborate Calatrava-designed decorations, the exact cost of which remains disputed, were the subject of court involvement for several years. Part of these decorations later resurfaced in Valencia and remained abandoned around La Nau.
Back to Irene Papas: the grand Trojans project faced delays and ultimately did not travel to Athens as initially envisioned. Yet neither Papas nor the Generalitat let the ambition dim. Proposals persisted for Papas to stage a version of One Hundred Years of Solitude featuring Mario Vargas Llosa, Pedro Almodóvar, and Gabriel García Márquez, a project promoted by Consuelo Císcar, the then-Director-General of Culture. The literary dream, closely tied to the region’s cultural identity, highlighted the era’s expansive, sometimes audacious, planning.
That grand plan, however, never came to fruition. In 2005, the City Foundation for the Performing Arts, which had become part of Teatres de la Generalitat, informed Irene Papas via letter that her contract as artistic director, originally set to run through 2007, had been terminated. Papas did not return to Valencia for professional engagements after that decision, leaving behind a legacy intertwined with a bold, controversial chapter of the city’s cultural evolution.