Barcelona invites Reykjavik to La Mercè
Icelandic capital to be guest of honor at capital’s annual festival, with the 2017 poster created by Valencian illustrator Xavier Mariscal
The Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau, socialist deputy mayor, Jaume Collboni, and the renowned artist and designer, Xavier Mariscal, on Monday unveiled the poster for Barcelona’s annual local festival, La Mercè.
From September 22 to 25, the Catalan capital celebrates its patron saint with festivities and cultural events all over the city, with September 24 a local bank holiday in Barcelona.
In this year’s poster, Mariscal has portrayed the city’s patron “as a girl of today”. Dressed in Gaudí’s mosaic look, the figure on the poster has a mobile phone in her hands and is surrounded by cars, bicycles and a cruise ship. During the poster’s presentation, Collboni said the girl was accompanied by symbols of contemporary life in Barcelona, both “the good and the bad”, such as solar panels and cars. “She is wearing solar panels as sunglasses and a recycled necklace,” he pointed out. The poster also features Cobi, the mascot of the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992, in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the event that helped turn the city into a modern European capital.
Music from Iceland
The city’s guest of honor at this year’s La Mercè is the capital of Iceland, Reykjavík. The north European city will be represented mainly through musical contributions to the fair, as music is one of Iceland’s biggest exports, the Mayor of Reykjavík Dagur B. Eggertsson explained. He also highlighted the strength of both cities in addressing large global issues.