Festical de Merce, Barcelona´s main Event!

Around the 24th of September Festival de La Merce takes place in Barcelona. This 5 days festival is the biggest festival in Barcelona and takes place at the end of the summer, just for the start of the autumn. The festival is held in honour of Mare de Deu de la Merce, the Patron Saint Of Barcelona. In 1902 the first edition was held.

In these few days hundreds of activities are being held on the Barcelona streets: there are musicians and street artists who are performing amongst the public. Moreover the festival consists out of a lot of traditions: human castles, giants, beasts and various guests of the Mediterranean. It´s not only the street which is used as a theater since the sky is the limit, there are multiple performances done in the sky, acrobatic things, balloons and ultra lights.

One major element which is coming back in a lot of festivals is fire. Since the Spaniards/Catalans believe that fire is scaring the ghosts away. During the festival there are big musical fireworks and a fire run.

Al the events are held on the streets therefore we advice people to try avoiding the city centre by car, since it will be impossible to drive.

People see the fire run as one of the festival highlights, during this run there will be a lot of fire and fireworks. The run consist out of groups whom are dressed up as dragon´s and walk around with a lot of sparkling and bright fireworks. Due to this fact it´s advisable to take protective clothing, hats and glasses since a lot of the sparkler fireworks sprays into the crowd. There are 2 versions of the festival, one is especially for children. The main difference is the use of fireworks, during the children edition the crowd won´t be sprayed with fireworks.

The second highlight are the Human Towers. These towers attract a lot of people to plaza Jaume: the main aim of the tower builders (Castellers) is to build a human tower and have a young child climbing to the top and stand up.

The festival is seen as Barcelona´s main street event; therefore this would be the perfect occasion to visit Barcelona and enjoying its culture. During these 5 days you can see 500 different events, with highlights as the Fire run and Human towers. FlatsByDays can offer multiple apartments two streets off plaza Jaume, the location of these Human Towers.

Barcelona during the 20th century

During July 1936 the Spanish civil war broke out. The city and Catalonia were Republican, most public services and enterprises were collectivized by the Cnt and Ugt (Unions). During the beginning of the civil war the republican power diminished. Since the city was under control of anarchists. On March 15, 1938 Barcelona got bombed, this happened under the command of Italian dictator Mussolini and these bombs were dropped on request of General Franco. After a battle of a year Barcelona fell into Nationalist Hands on 26 January 1939.

Because of the Nationalistic control Barcelona´s autonomous instructions were abolished and it was not allowed to speak Catalan in public life. Since Barcelona was Spain´s second city, Barcelona got more industrialized. Due to this fact there started a large-scale immigration from the other parts of Spain. This led to rapid urbanizations, area´s like Bellvitge and L´Hospitalet de Llobregat got swallowed up. All the inhabitants of these area´s needed to get to Barcelona, this led to the development of the metro, tarmacing the streets and installation of traffic lights.

In 1970 Barcelona had 1.557.863 inhabitants which lived with 15.517 people on one square kilometer.

After General Franco died, Spain became a democracy. Especially in Barcelona the pressure of change was enormous, since Barcelona and Catalonia suffered the most of his Regime. During the 80´s 90´s Barcelona had 2 major events: 1986 Spanish accession to the European community and the summer Olympics in 1992. These events led to a better international reputation and an increase of tourism.

Take a look at our apartments, where you can find a wide variety of apartments throughout the old city center.