Planes para conquistar Berlín

On October 17, 1987, at the height of the Cold War, the Protestant Zionskirche church in East Berlin hosted a clandestine concert with the bands Die Firma and Element of Crime. The recital, organized by opponents of the communist regime, ended with the attack of a group of neo-Nazis before the indifferent gaze of the police. David Granda immerses himself in an exhaustive investigation of the Stasi archives and brings together the accounts of more than forty protagonists of the plot, including political dissidents, musicians, confidants and espionage officers. The result is an obsessive and absorbing choral work that can be read as: a) a sophisticated essay on the repression of cultural dissidence in totalitarian states, b) a history book of the decline of communism told from its concerts, c) a spy novel with a punk earthquake soundtrack, d) a mythomaniac bestiary of polydrug dandies like David Bowie, Nick Cave or the Berlin manager of Joy Division, e) an elegy for the alternative scene that emerged on both sides of the Wall, which disappeared after the demolition of the border, f) a very delicate sentimental map of the most charismatic city in Europe, which includes a final trip to the North Sea to meet the real victim of the Guillaume case, the spy who unleashed the downfall of Chancellor Willy Brandt.