festival

The renowned performing arts festival which takes place in Girona has set a new record in its 24^th edition: 78,922 spectators and an occupancy rate of 91.8% in the paying shows. Temporada Alta presented this year its most ambitious, international and diverse programme yet. A total of 110 productions, 36 premieres and 25 international performances took place either on the street or on one of the festival’s 30 stages. "The festival has been a great success" assured its director Salvador Sunyer, who proudly announced that a new venue will be opened in Lima, to be added to those in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This announcement confirms Temporada Alta's internationalisation strategy and the will to build bridges with other companies around the world. 

Madonna, U2, Bjork and Kate Perry are just some of the international artists that chose Barcelona as their only stop in Spain on their international tours in 2015. During the first half of 2016, Adele and Coldplay's only tour dates in Spain will also be in Barcelona. The Catalan capital is also famous for its festivals, such as Primavera Sound, Sonar, Festival del Mil·leni and the International Jazz Festival, which attract hundreds of thousands of  people from all over the world. This Thursday, a less mass-oriented festival, Guitar BCN, announced its programme and it will also be able to count on international names. Former Oasis leader Noel Gallagher and his band High Flying Birds will be amongst them, as well as the emotional pop-rock of James Bay and the Cuban music ambassadors, Buena Vista Social Club, whom added Barcelona to the list of cities that will be part of their farewell tour. 

The second edition of Suite Festival, hosted and organised by Barcelona Liceu Opera House, will gather together a wide range of international artists such as Paul Anka, Johnny Hallyday, Michel Camilo and Emir Kusturica amongst others. The aim is to attract new audiences and make the Liceu “more social”, stated its General Director, Roger Guasch. Although the whole programme is still to be confirmed, Suite Festival faces into its second edition organising three more concerts than last year and with a 1.5 million euros budget, 300,000 euros more than in the first edition. The cheapest ticket will cost 15 euros and 180 euros will buy you the most expensive. To promote the opera to new and younger audiences and “break down”the barriers, Guasch assured that Liceu and Clipper, the promotion company of Suite Festival, will compare and mix their databases so that Barcelona Opera House can have as much accurate information on the attendants’profiles as possible.

The 59^th BFI London Film Festival 2015 includes six Catalan signature productions. Hèctor Fernández’s ‘The corpse of Anna Fritz’, Esteve Soler’s ‘Interior. Family’ and Cesc Gay’s ‘Truman’ are the titles directed by Catalans and three more are Catalan co-productions, Fernando León de Aranoa’s ‘A Perfect Day’, Eugenio Canevari’s ‘Paula’ and Patricio Guzmán’s ‘The Pearl Button’. A total of 240 films from 72 different countries will be shown in different theatres in the British capital, amongst them the work of internationally renowned directors Terence Davis, Cary Fukunaga and Jonas Cuarón, to name a few. 

Almost 200 fantastic and terror genre films will be projected, from the 9^th to the 18^th of October, in the 48th edition of Catalonia’s International Fantastic Film Festival, in Sitges. The opening film this Friday will be the lauded “The Witch”, whose director Robert Eggers won the best director award in Sundance Festival. Sitges 2015 will also commemorate the 20th anniversary of David Fincher’s ‘Seven’ and tribute north-American director Oliver Stone, who will be awarded the Honorific Prize. The Festival, in partnership with Mobile World Capital Barcelona, have launched ‘Phonetastic’ a novelty of this year which aims to power all the potential of new generation mobile devices as movie-making tools.  According to his director, Àngel Sala the pace of tickets sales is similar to last years but a new venue has been added to the seven existing, Cinema Tramuntana. 

“Barcelona and Catalan literature will be the main focus” at the Warsaw Book Fair 2016, stated the Director of Institut Ramon Llull (IRL), which is a public institution in charge of promoting Catalan culture and language, Àlex Susanna. Next year it will be time to “set the coveted invitation” to the Bologna Book Fair, he added and declared that IRL is “working hard” on a possible “Catalan landing” in the multidisciplinary Edinburgh Festival in two years’ time. Susanna admitted to be optimistic regarding Catalan culture’s international projection and highlighted that this development coincided with the economic crisis.   

The 47^th International Jazz Festival in Barcelona has organised a public celebration called ‘Jazz and Food’ this Saturday, the 3^rd of October, at ‘Parc del Centre’ in Poble Nou neighbourhood. There will be 12 hours of free music programmed for the event and a wide range of food trucks selling international street food. The party in the park is part of a new programme which was proposed on the 40^th anniversary of the festival. “It was an idea we pursued for years and now it is a reality. We have found the formula,” stated president of The Project, Tito Ramoneda, who recalled that the park has a special symbolism for the festival and said that he wants to continue celebrating the festival’s opening there. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people are expected to attend the event. 

From the 18^th to the 24^th of September, Barcelona celebrates ‘Mercè’, its patron saint. More than 500 activities will be held all over the city, from ‘castells’, traditional Catalan human towers, through international music festivals, to folklore parades and fireworks. Some of the most iconic buildings in the city will be open to the public. ‘Barcelona Acció Musical’, the music festival that takes place during ‘La Mercè’, has scheduled more than 90 concerts throughout the week. This year there will be more international artists than ever before. More than 20 artists from all over the world will perform. Different audio-visual ‘mappings’, will be projected onto the facades of several of Barcelona’s iconic buildings and the festival will close with a performance that synchronises music with fireworks known as ‘Piromusical’.

Most of the plays and performances that make up the FiraTàrrega’s programme for 2015 are open air performances, some 80% in fact. From Thursday until the 13^th of September, more than 50 art companies from all over the world will take part in one of the most important theatre festivals in Catalonia. Moreover, 30 of the shows at FiraTàrrega will be premieres. 250 performances held in 25 different venues, mainly outdoors, will turn this small town in the east of Catalonia into a big creative hub with more than 150,000 visitors expected. For the first time this year, three different shows from international companies will be performed on opening day.  

A total of 110 productions, 36 premieres and 25 international performances make up the numbers of this year’s Temporada Alta Theatre Festival in Girona. The performing arts festival will celebrate its 24th edition between the 2nd of October and the 8th of December by presenting one of the most ambitious, international and diverse programme ever. The opening performance will offer audience the opportunity to experience life in the Middle Ages. The Barri Vell of Girona, its old Quarter, will be transformed in a performance in which fire, but not firecrackers, will be prevalent. The idea is to experience Girona as it was before it had electricity, using totally freestyle itineraries.

By 21 August thousands of people are expected to have attended Gràcia’s local street festival, organised around its Patron Saint’s day. The programme of 'Festes de Gràcia' includes Catalan traditional human towers (called 'castells'), live music, exhibitions, activities for kids and much more. However, one of the most popular traditions in Gràcia during this festival is the street decoration. Indeed, most public spaces are included in an amateur competition where groups of neighbours embellish their own streets and squares so that many spots in the neighbourhood are thematically decorated. Although locals play a very important role in the festival, each year thousands of visitors, from the rest of Barcelona, but also from all over the world, come to the neighbourhood and take part in the celebration, which is gaining popularity worldwide.

Between the 5^th and 16^th of August, Barcelona will once again become the world's LGBT capital. For the 8^th consecutive year, the Catalan capital and its metropolitan area will play host to the Circuit Festival, which comprises a wide range of parties, concerts, sports events and other leisure activities for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people. The organisers expect more than 72,000 to attend this year, with 80% of them being foreigners. The average attendee is a gay male aged between 25-40, spending 250 euros per day and staying 8.4 days. However, the organisers also stress that many women and people of many other age groups are also coming to enjoy the festival and the manifold targeted activities. They estimate that the LGBT festival will bring €150 million to the local economy. Indeed, it is one of Barcelona's most important and most international events in terms of number of attendees and economic impact, although it is still way behind the city's jewel, the Mobile World Congress.

Barcelona will continue to host each year the world's main event of the mobile phone-related industries until at least 2023, it has been confirmed by the company organising the Mobile World Congress, GSMA, on Tuesday through a press release. “We are very pleased to confirm that Barcelona will continue to serve as the Mobile World Capital and home of the Mobile World Congress for the next eight years”, stated the CEO of GSMA, John Hoffman. The Catalan capital has been uninterruptedly hosting this annual event since 2006 and has been declared the Mobile World Capital, as the project goes beyond the congress and involves the development of a business environment focused on this type of industry at international level. The current contract was due to end in 2018 and a few months ago Barcelona officially told GSMA it was willing to continue hosting the event until 2023.

For the last few weeks, the word 'Cruïlla' has been monopolising conversations with my friends. This started to happen since we decided to go to Cruïlla Festival 2015, a relatively young Barcelona music festival taking place from the 10^th to the 12^th of July at Parc del Fòrum (an enormous setup on the seafront). As we are all foreigners not yet proficient in this country's language, for us the word 'Cruïlla' became like a mantra: we kept repeating it, ignoring the fact that it had real meaning by itself. We later found out that it is a Catalan term for 'crossroads'. Indeed, this music event is conceived as a real place of encounter not just among artists coming from all over the world (45 in total this year), but especially among people coming to enjoy the music (46,000 overall). As performances vary greatly in style, very different crowds intermingle, providing the event with a pleasantly eclectic flavour and a tolerant soul.

The eighth edition of Festival Cruïlla Barcelona will run Friday through Sunday at Parc del Fòrum in Barcelona. The spectacle features an eclectic lineup of 45 artists, 18 of which hail from Spain. In addition to the three nights of music, there will be performances of castellers – a Catalan tradition of building human towers – along with displays by famous graffiti artists and a selection of music documentaries. Among the main acts are Kendrick Lamar, FFS (Franz Ferdinand + Sparks), Ms. Lauryn Hill, Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley and Jamie Cullum.