Fairs and Festivals

According to tradition, Halloween night is when the dead return to visit the world of the living. In homes across Catalonia, trays filled with chestnuts, panellets (little almond cakes) and dessert wine await them. Meanwhile, the welcome continues outdoors with fun-filled parties where they enjoy the gift of life before returning to their resting place. Don’t leave them to dance on their own! Here are some of the festivities that celebrate the night of the dead.

Strength, balance, courage and common sense, the four key concepts of human tower building, repeated like a mantra by its practitioners. For spectators, the most appropriate words might be thrills, nerves, suspense and joy. Without a doubt, to experience a human tower building event is to navigate a sea of sensations. So it’s no wonder that UNESCO inscribed this Catalan tradition par excellence on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Very close to Barcelona you will find a great many examples of modernista works created between the 19th and 20th centuries. Urban palaces and holiday homes, churches and hospitals, warehouses and gardens, factories and cellars, all with the signature of the great architects of the movement in Catalonia: Antoni Gaudí, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, among others. To commemorate this cultural trend, different towns and cities are organizing festivals and fairs to recover their aesthetic quality. Want to find out more about them?