School Blog

For a whole week there are all kind of celebrations and cultural events in the streets and at the fairground: puppet shows, bullfighting, flamenco, music performances, traditional processions, and exhibitions.

Two major processions usually take place in Granada during Corpus Christi.

The first is the Tarasca, of pagan origin, which takes place on Wednesday morning and marks the beginning of a long school break. In this procession, a figure of a woman on a dragon is accompanied by gigantes y cabezudos. These caracthers are key participants of the celebrations, since they represent important people in the history of Granada.

The other procession, takes place on Thursday, the Corpus Christi day, and is a solemn and religious event.

A week before the fair, the carocas (a traditional satirical competition) are displayed in Plaza Bib-Rambla. These carocas are cartoons with satirical verses which humorously highlight major local and national events that took place during the year. The authors are usually local artists, most of them amateurs who compete among hundreds of participants to be selected. Every year only 20 carocas are published. This year from 260 carocas presented 20 were selected and will be displayed in Plaza Bib Rambla on May 11th.

There is little left for the start of the Granada Music and Dance Festival!

In its 72nd edition, you can attend 105 shows from June 21 to July 19. Among them, the Bob Dylan concert stands out, who will be the artist in charge of inaugurating the festival this year.

The Granada Festival is one of the most important cultural events in Spain. Since 1952 the festival has brought together some of the best artists in the world in the historic Andalusian city. This year the festival offers an incredibly diverse and exciting programme. The program will include classical music concerts, opera performances, jazz, flamenco and contemporary dance performances.

Granada is a historical place full of culture and heritage and is known for its monuments, such as the Alhambra, and its lively nightlife and gastronomy. The Granada Music and Dance Festival seeks to take advantage of everything the city has to offer for an unforgettable cultural event. In addition to the presence of Bob Dylan, renowned directors such as Riccardo Chailly and Giovanni Antonini will be present. There will be classical voices such as Anna Lucia Richter, Anna Pirozi and Carlos Álvarez and performances by flamenco artists such as Alba Molina, Argentina and María Toledo.

On the 3rd of May and as every year, Granada has got dressed up in frills and flowers to celebrate May crosses. In courtyards and squares, the air is alive with tradition. But where does the May Crosses tradition come from?

All cultures have celebrated the arrival of spring with rituals of devotion to the gods of nature. Coinciding with these dates, in the Christian tradition in May the crosses festival is celebrated. In Spain it appeared on all of the calendars, being associated with the legend of discovery by Saint Helena of the true Cross of Christ.

In Granada, the tradition became deeply rooted, and lived on with great intensity from the moment the city was conquered by the Reyes Catolicos onwards. Following the intimate tradition of Arabic carmen houses, the crosses of May were originally celebrated in the courtyards of the homes. Altars were built there where the crosses raised and were adorned with flowers and with objects displayed beside them which conferred distinction and prestige.

Ceramic pieces, copper, manila shawls and everything which would suggest abundance was selected for exhibition on these occasions. Plants, fruit, grains and everything related with the typical vegetation of this time of year also had its place.

In the neighbourhoods, the less powerful classes organised collective crosses in squares and courtyards, where the neighbours lent their best possessions for adorning the altars.

Sierra Nevada 2023 has put on sale tickets to access the finish area of the two events of the Snowboard Cross World Cup that will be held from March 10 to 12 at the Loma de Dílar SBX circuit.

The tickets are tickets for the non-skiing public that allow the use of the Jara chairlift which, from Pradollano, gives access to the finish area, where the competition can be followed standing or in the stands, although access to it does not imply a reservation seat. For those who wish, the ticket also entitles them to use the Loma de Dílar chairlift in order to follow the foot races from the last curve of the route.

Tickets for the two World Cup events, with prices ranging from 9 to 20 euros per day, can be purchased through the Sierra Nevada website or in person at the ticket office in Plaza de Andalucía, to each of the three days that make up the competition program or for all three.

The two events of the Sierra Nevada World Cup will have the participation of more than a hundred runners, the best in the world in one of the most spectacular disciplines of snowboarding.

The popular festivity of San Cecilio is celebrated with a great pilgrimage on the first Sunday of February. This pilgrimage has a large influx of people.

it takes place in the vicinity of the Abbey of Sacromonte and the nearby caves, where the ashes of San Cecilio and the plumbeous books appeared. There, a civic-religious function is held in honor of the main patron saint, San Cecilio.

It is a tradition on this date to eat salaíllas, tortas jayuyas, beans with ham, cod, tortillas from Sacromonte. In addition, the popular tanguillo of "la Reja" is sung and danced.

In addition to the many religious festivals in Spain, there are also those dedicated to worldly things. For example, the Tango Festival in Granada, which is dedicated to tango music and dance. It has been held every March since 1988 for a whole week.

In addition to live music and dance performances, there are also dance courses, readings, lectures, exhibitions, film evenings and many other cultural highlights. Performances by international tango stars in Granada are not uncommon this week.

Tango is presented as an urban culture and you can get a good idea of what tango means in the events and courses mentioned. The Argentine tango composer Enrique Discépolo once said it was “a sad thought that you can dance to”. But the tango festival in Granada isn't really that sad. The focus of the event is on enjoying music, partying and dancing and celebrating music together.

You can experience the individual dance performances either in the stages and theaters (especially the theater "Isabel La Católica") or on the numerous squares in Granada. Whether accompanied by the piano or the double bass, by the guitar, violin or bandoneon - the tango will sweep you away if it hasn't already done so.

1340. Knowing that his besieged Kingdom of Granada is doomed to disappear due to the advance of the neighboring kingdoms, Yusuf I, the Sultan of Granada, embarks on the construction of a building that reflects the splendor of his civilization and defies oblivion: the Alhambra palaces. His vizier, Ibn al-Khatib (Amr Waked), poet and genius ahead of his time, participates in this colossal challenge. But when the sultan's son, Muhammad V, inherits the throne and involves him in the new policies of his reign, the vizier is torn between the ideas of his old world and the emerging new one. His chronicles tell us the history of the Granada of the s. XIV, the swan song of Muslim Europe.

Granada is the privileged environment in which the most anticipated concerts of one of the longest-running, award-winning and respected jazz festivals in Europe take place: the Granada International Jazz Festival. Since that first edition in 1980, the Granada International Jazz Festival has spent forty years uninterruptedly welcoming the excellence of jazz history: Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Haden, Art Blakey, Tete Montoliu, Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter, Abbey Lincoln, Herbie Hancock, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bebo and Chucho Valdés, Ron Carter, Eliane Elias, Robert Glasper, among an endless list of musicians with whom he has managed to create very intense and rewarding emotional bonds.

Fans who travel from many parts of Spain and Europe come to this event to enjoy extraordinary concerts in the beautiful and emblematic Teatro Isabel la Católica and throughout the city with Jazz in parallel with more than 80 concerts and activities, generating an exciting jazz atmosphere. The Granada International Jazz Festival, in the fall, is a must.

THE FESTIVAL
Organized by the Granada City Council, Granada Provincial Council, the Culture and Historical Memory Delegation and the AguaGranada Foundation, the Young Filmmakers Festival has been committed for three decades to the discovery of new talents, celebrating the diversity of contemporary cinema with a special interest in debut films and short films by the most promising filmmakers on the world scene. An international festival, open to the selection of films that explore new audiovisual forms without distinction of genre, duration or format.

The twenty-eighth edition will take place from October 25 to 30, 2022 in order to generate a space for reflection and meeting between creators, industry professionals and the public of Granada. A place of experimentation and approximation between artistic expressions that continues the trail left by the Granada-born filmmaker José Val del Omar, whose influence is historically linked to the contest, which awards the Val del Omar Award for the best film.

With the Isabel la Católica Theater as the main venue, different proposals will fuse cinema and live music. Special sessions with which to bring the public closer to the creators and recover the value of the big screen experience.

The Palacio de Conde Gabias will host the sessions of the International Competition and the Aguaespejo Competition, while La Madraza, the Espacio V Centenario and the Filmoteca de Andalucía will be other spaces that will host events and screenings related to the festival, which will include master classes, round tables, concerts, presentations and training activities to take cinema beyond the theater, overflowing the city.