Festival Grec de Barcelona

The Festival Grec de Barcelona (or Grec Festival of Barcelona) is an international theatre, dance, music and circus festival. Over the course of its history, this long-standing event has become a major summer attraction in Barcelona.

The festival takes its name from its main venue: an open-air theatre (the Teatre Grec) built on Mount Montjuïc for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition. At first, this “Greek Theatre” was the only venue used for festival productions, but, today, the Grec programme embraces many other theatres, cultural facilities and public spaces all over the city of Barcelona.

The Grec Festival is promoted by Barcelona City Council, but no other public administrations are involved; rather, the shows are organised and produced by a large number of theatres and promoters.

The main sources of income for the festival are public grants, sponsorship and ticket sales. In 2010, a total of 101,181 tickets were sold for the events on the programme.

The festival pursues a two-fold mission: firstly, to stage the most outstanding works by Catalan artists and companies, providing them with support by producing their shows for performance at the festival; and, secondly, to present all the most interesting shows from Spain and the rest of the world every year.

Indeed, the Grec Festival is Catalonia’s main showcase for works produced abroad, and in recent years the organisers have been keen to internationalise the event even further, focusing on presenting the most innovative pieces from such countries as the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and France.

In the years leading up to the restoration of democracy in Spain, the Barcelona theatre scene witnessed the birth of an innovative, independent approach to the performing arts, a movement that broke radically with the more conventional fare that had dominated the listings in the city until that time. The key figures in this alternative scene were, precisely, those that, in 1976, set up the Assembly of Actors and Directors. This Assembly was able, in just a few weeks, to programme a summer theatre season at the Teatre Grec in Montjuïc.

Nearly 47 years after its inauguration, Barcelona’s little-used “Greek Theatre” had fallen into a semi-abandoned state. Besides setting an example in self-management, the first Grec Festival both salvaged the theatre in Montjuïc and achieved considerable public success.

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Wikipedia