GRACIA FESTIVAL

During the summer months, every barrio in Barcelona has its own street festival. The most popular and colorful street festival of all has to be la Festa major de Gràcia, where they go all out. Streets are decorated in the most fantastic themes, like zombie apocalypse, sea creatures, jungle or Mexican fiesta. These festive decorations are hand-made by the residents of Gràcia. A definite must-see!

Every year in August, Gràcia is transformed into a fantasy world. Streets are filled with the most imaginative decorations, some of which are so large and detailed it’s hard to imagine the hours spent on building these creations. Originally, the festival was only for neighborhood residents, but now it attracts people from all over the world.

 

It’s even more amazing to see the decorations from up close and to discover what they’re actually made of: plastic bottles sprayed in all kinds of colors, umbrellas, egg boxes, plastic from fruit crates… the residents haven’t only been crafty, they’ve been recycling like crazy too!

 

This street was quite spectacular. After passing by a giant monstrous hand at the entrance (can you imagine seeing this as a child!?), we followed the crowd into what seemed to be a tomb stone. Inside, there were zombies, a big bath with orange colored water, Death, hundreds of giant spiders… A live horror show! 

 

Besides the decorations, the festival offers many activities and workshops, concerts and parades, as well as Catalan traditions like gegants, castells and correfocs. 

One of these traditions was a parade of trabucaires: Catalan “bandits” wearing traditional costumes and firing blunderbuss guns. My god… I wasn’t expecting it was going to be so LOUD! I hope there weren’t any unknowing tourists with heart problems. Jesus. Every time a gun was fired, it was like a bomb exploded, the whole streets were trembling. It was really hard to take any good pictures while covering both ears and not seeing what picture I was taking, so I took about thirty crooked and blurry pictures like this: 

Catalan traditions… cover those ears or you’ll be deaf for life!

 

Traditional Catalan gegants, the usual guests at Catalan festivities.   

At night, the atmosphere got even better when all the colorful lights went on and with live music at almost every corner. Too bad it rained for hours on one of the nights we were there, but luckily we were safe underneath a (partly covered) terrace with umbrellas, some tapas and wine. 

The winning street: calle Verdi.

The last night of the festival, we watched a correfoc, which is always lots of fun! It’s a Catalan fire run with groups dressed as devils and big evil-looking creatures running around with fireworks. This is something you really need to experience! I’ve seen one a couple of years ago during the Mercè festival, and I still remember how amazed I was. Again, not the ideal circumstances to take pictures, but I wore long cotton clothing and covered my hair a bit (don’t want my hair to catch fire – again) so I could get a little closer.  But since the devils like to run directly into the crowd with their fireworks, a lot of running away was part of it too. A great night!

Creepiest thing EVER!!!

So when you plan to visit Barcelona in the summer months (or if you live here but you happened to be away – yep, flights are cheaper at that time!), be sure not to miss the Gràcia festival next August.

But the party ain’t over yet: from the 12^th to the 21^st of September, the street festival of Poblenou takes place (food, concerts, kids’ activities, Catalan traditions) and I am already looking forward to la Mercè, the biggest festival of all, from the 19^th until the 24^th of September.