It’s not every day that a quiet walk through hot narrow streets leaves you tumbling into your own Alice in Wonderland world. With giant playing cards falling from the sky, rabbits in hats and towering blue caterpillars looming overhead, it takes the vision of Alice herself to help make the madness make sense.

Festival de Gracia

This is the Festival Gracia, or Festa de Gracia, depending on which language you plump for. It’s held every August in Barcelona in Gracia, a bohemian barrio that once stood separate from the city but which now links up quite nicely via the famous Passeig de Gracia (home to Gaudi’s landmark Casa Pedrera…that big house with the swirly stone balconies and creepy ice cream chimneys. We’ll come back to that later…)

Residents and neighbours work together all year to produce these imaginative street art displays – and then crowds come from dawn until, well, the next dawn to admire and party away.

As expected in this part of Spain ( Catalunya, a region with a desire for independence ) Catalan culture sweeps through the streets in the form of red and yellow striped flags unfurling from balconies and castellers limbering up ready to form their famed human towers. But alongside local traditions, the soundtracks from Ghostbusters and Jaws prowl between the papier-mache parrots while indie hipsters and ageing rockers perform on stages set on street corners and leafy plazas.

It’s a fun festival for families by day and rebel-ready revellers by night with talented performers lined up day after day after day.

For me, though, it was Alice and friends who stole the show by plunging me into an underwater world of swirling confetti and fluttering fish.

So I leave you with this brief photoessay as a taster of the Festival de Gracia. For the rest of my time in Barcelona? I’ll be back…

Disclosure I visited Barcelona as part of the # mustlovefestivals project I’m taking part in. Read more about it over here. I stayed at the hotel run by Generator Hostels which had the perfect location for a trip like this. Close enough to walk to the festival, far enough away not to hear it at night! They’re also one of the #mustlovefestivals sponsors but as ever, as always, I kept the right to write what I like here on www.wordpress.com