Christmas 2025: 10 cultural projects that have lit up the year
We live in a world marked by uncertainty. Our day-to-day life moves at breakneck speed; sometimes, we can’t help but feel like we’re losing our way. But even in the midst of this disorienting landscape we find points to lean on; spaces where we can connect with others and, perhaps, where we can understand ourselves a little more. It is the connection that is generated between those who dance on a stage and those who get excited sitting in the patio; or the flame that ignites when a book discovers a new way of understanding the world. It’s the culture. And it is around these sparks of hope where Nadala Culture with impact find your reason for being.
Nadala is the cultural publication with which, for 59 years, the Carulla Foundation wishes happy holidays. It is a congratulations, but also a sign of our commitment to the transformative power of culture. This year’s edition recognizes and celebrates ten impactful cultural projects that have lit lights of hope throughout 2025. These are initiatives that have raised awareness, connected people and activated communities; which demonstrate that, even in times of uncertainty, culture continues to be the light that helps us open new paths.
Performance of Radicella at the presentation of Nadala (Photo: Angel Garcia)
The route of Christmas 2025 it starts with the warmth that comes from dialogue and peace. It is about the Uncertain Festivalwhere young Catalans and Palestinians use theater to build bridges in the midst of wounded realities. In the second chapter, light takes the form of a shared language. In these pages we meet the enormous civil society effort to promote Catalan; to build a society that promotes inclusion through our language.
Nadala it also delves into the vibrant fire of popular culture. From the hand of Manresa Mediterranean Fairwe discover how young people are appropriating their roots to build new identities without renouncing the past. And, from tradition, we jump to the future. The fourth chapter delves into the emerging video game sector in Catalonia. Conrad Roset i Nomad Studio they show us that technology can also be a space of beauty, poetry and community.
The next stop is the Miró Foundationa space that, fifty years later, still keeps the artist’s flame alive. This rebellious spark also runs through the Santa Monica Arts Center that, with the exhibition After the Galeexplores the power of art as a healing tool. But impactful culture doesn’t just happen in big institutions – in fact, it’s sometimes even more transformative when it crosses museum walls. Light filters through and reaches the most vulnerable neighborhoods with the project modulean initiative that demonstrates that culture has an outstanding potential to regenerate neighborhoods and create new forms of belonging.
the movie Wolfgang illuminates the reality, often misrepresented, of children with autism spectrum disorder and, above all, shows us how music can be a language of deep connection. Then, Nadala takes us to the Institut Quatre Cantons del Poblenou. In these pages we know the book The art of being humanin which the neuroscientist David Bueno discovers that artistic education can be fundamental in creating more hopeful futures. The tour ends with Opera in the veinsby Orfeó Lleidatà, a project that transforms the history of the Canal d’Urgell into a community show about territory and memory.
Ten chapters, ten lights. Christmas 2025 it is the testimony of an enormous collective effort to illuminate the penumbra. Each of these projects is different and unique, but they all share the same conviction: that culture is light and that, now more than ever, it needs to grow.
