¡VIVA LA FIESTA!
Now this is a phrase almost everyone’s heard before. This essentially means live the party in Spanish, and it shows us one thing: the Spanish know how to party, and more importantly, they know their way around festivals!
In this post, I’ll be briefly talking about 5 major Spanish festivals, famous locally and worldwide - if you ever find yourself in Spain at the same time as any of these, you should definitely take part!
NUMBER ONE - LA TOMATINA
This is one of- if not the most well known Spanish festival among global tourists. The Tomato Fight Festival, as it is fairly dubbed, involves 20,000 people each year throwing and smashing tomatoes at each other in the streets of Bunol, Spain.
Painting the streets red must be an experience everyone’s dying to go for, though, because the tickets sell out almost instantly every year. In 2022, this is taking place on the 31st of August!
NUMBER TWO - LA BATALLA DEL VINO
Look, I don’t know if you’re seeing a pattern here, but I definitely am. The Battle of Wine festival has people dousing each other in Spanish wine using an assortment of weapons, including but not limited to spray bottles and water guns. The Spanish sure like to throw food at each other!
Celebrated between June 27 and 30 every year, the town of Haro’s Place de la Paix (place of peace) welcomes thousands of people dressed in white with a red scarf round their necks annually - though I assume their shirts aren’t white by the end of the day.
NUMBER THREE - LA MERCE
This human tower competition in Barcelona is not to be missed. Held in September, usually during the last week, it is one of the biggest festivals and parties in Barcelona, attracting crowds of thousands to watch street performances with beautiful costumes.
The correfoc, part of the celebrations, also involves people dressed in stunning costumes like demons and dragons passing through the crowds with fireworks in their arms. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? You could even say it sounds like a blast.
NUMBER FOUR - FALLAS
Valencia celebrates spring for a week in mid-March with parades, paella contests, beauty pageants, marching bands, costume shows, and last but not least - fireworks. Every day at 2pm, people gather in the Town Hall Square to watch a spectacular fireworks display marking the start of the festivities.
On the last day of the festival, the large effigies set up around the city are burned. Must be quite a sight!
NUMBER FIVE - HOLY WEEK
Seville, one of the more famous areas of Spain, has, of course, its own famous festival as well. Extremely important in Spain and held between mid-March and April annually, this festival is immensely popular, requiring people to book accommodation months in advance to witness Seville’s most impressive celebrations nationally of 7-9 processions a day.
Members of the brotherhood of significant churches don hooded robes and take part in a procession down the streets of Seville holding statues of their patron saints, or Christ. Unlike the other festivals on this list, Holy Week is usually intense and serious.
And that’s it! From fun and chaotic to solemn and grand, Spain has everything to offer in terms of festivals. If you’re looking to have a good time in Spain, you should certainly drop by at least one of these - and tell me what it feels like to be there in person, since I’ve never gotten the opportunity!