Welcome back to the Metropolitan Culture Corner! This month we go behind the scenes with Lulú Txispún: burlesque dancer, teacher and festival organizer extraordinaire. She has traveled the world performing, and even serving as a judge at international burlesque events. She has also taught burlesque since 2013, and is the co-founder of the Barcelona Burlesque Meeting and Festival.
Joining her in this interview is one of her artistic collaborators in the festival, who will also be assisting us with translation during the interview. Yiste is an acclaimed photographer, and graphic and performing artist originally from Caracas, Venezuela, who now makes his home in Barcelona. He is known for producing transgressive, often political neoburlesque, and is currently the producer of monthly burlesque show Foxy Cabaret.
The next edition of the Barcelona Burlesque Meeting and Festival is September 26th-28th, 2025—more details are on the festival website (www.bcnburlesquemeeting.com) or Instagram page (@bcnburlesquemeeting). Burlesque is a commonly misunderstood art form, but one that has played a significant role in the underground—and sometimes not so underground—performance cultures of major cities across the world, including and especially Barcelona.
Last month we interviewed Chris Reilly, former chair of the Barcelona chapter of Democrats Abroad. Born in the UK, Chris Reilly’s professional life has taken him all over the world, working in business development and senior sales roles, specifically in the fields of new technologies and media.
Chris became a green card holder while working in the United States, and became a naturalized American citizen in 2001. While living in New York he worked on the presidential campaigns for John Kerry and Barak Obama. Later, his love of his adopted country led him to want to continue to stay involved even from afar. In 2009, his work brought him and his family to Barcelona, where he became heavily involved in non-profit organization Democrats Abroad, which—among other things—works to encourage American citizens living abroad to register to vote.
Stay tuned to Barcelona Metropolitan’s YouTube channel and social media to make sure you don’t miss a single episode of our monthly interview series! We’ve got a great lineup in store for you in 2025. You can also watch the full archive of previous interviews on our official YouTube channel, or listen to all the MCC interviews as free podcasts on Soundcloud. Be sure to follow Metropolitan on Facebook: @BCNMetropolitan, Twitter: @bcnmetropolitan and Instagram: @barcelonametropolitan.