festival

Barcelona’s neighbourhood of Gràcia has started its annual street festival on Wednesday, a week long festival famous for its street decorations and community spirit. Every year residents form committees to chose a theme and decorate their streets in competition with each other with ornaments made by the residents themselves. The festival is popular with tourists and Barcelonans alike and starts on the 15th August every year.

Twenty artists from Beijing’s National Circus o present ‘The Dream of a Journey to the East’ at the Porta Ferrada Festival, in the Costa Brava's town of Sant Felíu de Guíxols. The show, with a mix of entertainment and acrobatics choreographed to music, is directed by a showman who leads the narrative in close proximity to the spectators. Beijing’s National Circus has visited over 60 countries in the past 40 years and has won several international competitions.

The ‘Voll-Damm Barcelona International Jazz Festival’ gave its gold medal to George Wein, a prominent jazz promoter from America. Wein received the award on the main stage of the Newport Festival in the United States in front of an audience of 7,000 people. Wein recognised the uniqueness of Barcelona’s jazz festival.

The opera ‘Don Giovanni’ by Mozart will be staged in Catalonia at the Castell de Peralada Festival in the Empordà County, on the Costa Brava. The renowned opera tells the story of a man living on the edge in a constant search without end, with allusions to sadism and immortality. First premiered in 1787 in Prague, this modern production sill reflects many aspects of society and has an impressive cast including the famous baritone Carlos Álvarez from Málaga.

Catalan filmmaker David Victori’s short film has passed a rigorous selection process and will be shown at the Venice Film Festival. His submission, ‘La Culpa’ which deals with the emotions of guilt and revenge, participated in ‘Your Film Festival’ that is organised by Youtube. Victori’s submission is one of the ten short-listed, out of 15,000 original entries. The winner will receive a prize of $500,000 for the production of a short film.

The 'Dansalona’ festival in the months of August and September is aiming to “popularise dance” in the city with a variety of activities. With numerous performances in theatres across Barcelona, the opportunity to discover behind the scenes and practical workshops, the festival aims to open the city’s creative industry to new audiences, including foreign visitors.

The ‘Caixa Penedès Vijazz’ kicked off with a concert from the seven-Grammy award winner Al Jarreau. At the heart of one of Catalonia’s most famous wine regions and less than 50 km away from Barcelona, a series of jazz concerts take place over the weekend, combined with wine tasting.

The 5th edition of the Catalan capital’s music festival ‘Cruïlla Barcelona’ kicked off with Iggy & the Stooges, Nneka, Gogol Bordello, Julieta Venegas, La Pegatina, M.I.A, The Specials, Cypress Hills, 2manydjs, Sharon Jones, Amadou & Mariam, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Gustavo Gordera being some of the 35 artists who will play their music from Friday to Saturday night.

This year’s ‘Grec ‘Festival offers 68 plays, dancing, music and circus performances from July 1st to the 31st, 30 of them from international artists. Ramón Simó, the new director of the event, considers that this year’s Grec is more international, contemporany and multidisciplinary than ever before and its objective is to bring to Barcelona the best shows from Europe and the world.

Lana del Rey, New Order and The Roots star at the three day advanced music festival attended by almost 100,000 people. Visitors from 80 different countries filled the festival with a thousand different colours as Sónar Barcelona was the culmination of the Festival's travels for this year, which have taken it to Sao Paulo, Tokyo and Cape Town.

Sónar 2012 electronic music festival is underway and Barcelona’s CosmoCaixa has invited its visitors to hear the sounds of meteorology at the ‘METEOlab’ exhibition. It is a selection of works by some of the most prominent artists in the field of audible and multimedia contemporary creation, such as Thomas Köner, Chris Watson and Geir Jenssen, all inspired in meteorology and climatic phenomenology.

50 balloons from across Europe will participate in the festival’s next edition, which is held from July 4th to 8th, in the town of Igualada, in the centre of Catalonia. Besides, the European Balloon Festival has renewed its logo after sixteen years and the organisation has created a new website where Facebook and Twitter are linked directly to facilitate interaction between the event and the public.

The festival offers more than 150 proposals in its program, including music, exhibitions, screenings and activities for professionals based around the technology applied to artistic creation. For three days, from June 14th to the 16th, Sonar brings electronic rhythms to Barcelona. This year, the MACBA square, in the centre of Barcelona, will be the venue for Festival’s day programme while the Fira Gran Via, at l’Hospitalet de Llobregat, will be the night venue.

The Enramades of Arbúcies, a small town near Girona, is one of the oldest traditional celebrations in Catalonia. Each year this event takes place from June 7th to 13th. However, the most spectacular day is the ‘street flower carpet’ championship, which took place last Sunday. The neighbours from each street (including children, youngsters, adults and elders) all work together in this process.

La Patum is a historical and immensely popular representation, born and derived from the ancient and medieval theatre performances held during the week of Corpus Christi. It is held in Berga, in Central Catalonia and it has been declared by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. 100,000 people expected at Berga for this Corpus Christi Festival.