The Festival Cruïlla Barcelona’s sounds cover the Forum area during the weekend

Barcelona (ACN).- The 5^th edition of the Catalan capital’s music festival ‘Cruïlla Barcelona’ kicked off on Friday at the Fòrum area, where other festivals such as Primavera Sound take place. Iggy Pop, in the Iggy & the Stooges format, Nneka and Gogol Bordello were Friday’s top artists. The festival started at 19h with Gustavo Cordera, the Catalan band Prats and the Mexican Julieta Venegas. As last year, the festival has four stages, called Estrella, Cruïlla Bcn, Cases de la Música and Ramon Llull. The latter one only showcases Catalan artists, being a display for local bands. In fact, there are many local artists this year, combined as always with musicians and top bands coming from all over the world. Some of the Catalan groups are Lenacay, La Pegatina and The Pepper Pots. The festival sticks to its identity, a cross-road of styles (‘cruïlla’ means ‘cross-road’ in Catalan). Rock, Ska, Hip Hop, Soul, African music and Electronic music will all be present at the Fòrum this weekend.

The festival will host 35 concerts, on Friday 6^th and Saturday 7^th of July. Saturday’s main concerts are those of M.I.A, The Specials and Cypress Hills. In addition, other international artists who will play in this year’s ‘Cruïlla Barcelona’ are 2manydjs, Sharon Jones, Amadou & Mariam, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Gustavo Gordera.

One of the new aspects of this year’s  festival is the fostering of dance music, with on one side 2manydjs, and on the other Birdy Nam Nam –a French electronic avant-garde band that fills stadiums– and Stelar Band, with their surprising electroswing music. 

This year there is a budget of €1.5 million, which represents 15% more than last year. The organisers’ objective is to consolidate the ‘Cruïlla Barcelona’ as Barcelona’s third most important music festival, after the Primavera Sound and the Sónar. To reach this, the festival has made a significant effort to try to attract the attention of audiences from Madrid and the South of France. The organisers want to overtake last year’s number of visitors. In 2011 there were 22,000 festival-goers, 4,000 more than in 2010.