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Barcelona–Sitges vintage rally
1 March
The best things to do in Barcelona this March
Barcelona is packed with events in March: niche electronica, legendary live acts, jazz, classical, two food festivals, an American film fest, plenty of calçotada and giant-figure parades. Here’s La Cotorra’s pick of the best events happening across the city this month.
The 68th International Barcelona–Sitges Vintage Car Rally will send beautifully restored early-20th-century cars rolling through the streets. It sets off from Plaça Sant Jaume at 10.30 am, with the cars expected to reach Sitges port roughly two hours later, where you can look at them until 5.30 pm.
This much-loved Barcelona tradition, often dubbed the “sweet festival”, began as a religious pilgrimage to the church of Sant Medir. These days, it is best known as a family-friendly day out built around one very simple idea: catching sweets. Expect parades of horse-drawn carriages and lorries tossing kilos of wrapped sweets into the crowd.
The routes run through Gràcia’s main streets, so if you live nearby, be warned: your shoes may still be sticking to the pavement for days afterwards.
This major classical music festival brings together 25 ticketed and 27 free concerts. This year’s programme centres on two themes: Gaudí Year and Barcelona’s status as UNESCO World Capital of Architecture.
The festival also steps outside traditional concert halls, with performances taking place in Casa Batlló, Casa Vicens, Palau Güell, the historic Estrella Damm brewery building and the Collserola communications tower.
This strand focuses on Catalan musical modernism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Registration is required for all free events, and unfortunately, many are already fully booked.
This festival celebrates Catalan cuisine through dishes made with local produce and seasonal ingredients. Across two days, eight Barcelona restaurants will reinterpret traditional recipes, with a calçotada – the grilling of calçots – as the big centrepiece.
There will also be live music, DJ sets, beer tastings, and cooking workshops.
London multi-instrumentalist, rapper and producer Alfa Mist blends jazz, hip-hop and soul with effortless cool. Since releasing his debut in 2015, he has become one of the defining names on the UK jazz scene, with a sound that moves between introspective arrangements and groove-heavy tracks.
If modern jazz is your thing, this is one to lock in – especially with tickets starting at around €30.
For the 13th year running, Americana brings a hand-picked selection of US independent films to Barcelona cinemas, shown in their original language with Spanish subtitles. This year’s line-up includes Sundance breakout Rebuilding, starring Josh O’Connor in a story about people displaced by wildfires, and the queer comedy Twinless.
Mostra is a small independent festival devoted to avant-garde and experimental electronic music, created as an antidote to the city’s more commercial mega-events. Go for the friendly crowd, musical risk-taking, fresh local and international names – and, of course, the chance to dance in the Olympic Pavilion, where most of the performances take place.
Time Out Fest returns to the city’s namesake food hall for its sixth anniversary. This year, 10 of Barcelona’s top restaurants will serve exclusive dishes available only during the festival, all built around standout Catalan ingredients. Expect DJ sets, tastings, workshops and talks across the weekend too.
This one is for fans of traditional Catalan festivities: human towers, giant figures, lively parades and dancing. The festival of Sant Josep Oriol, also known as Fiesta del Pi, takes place around the basilica of Santa Maria del Pi in the Gothic Quarter and honours the 17th-century priest Josep Oriol, who served there.
What sets it apart from many of Barcelona’s other traditional festivals is its recreation of the exploits of the famous 17th-century Catalan bandit Perot Rocaguinarda, known as Perot the Thief. He made such a mark on local history that a nearby street in the Gothic Quarter still bears his name.
One of the greatest living pianists, Martha Argerich gave her first recital in Argentina at the age of four and performed for Juan Domingo Perón at 12. Now 84, she remains a global classical music icon and three-time Grammy winner. In Barcelona, she will perform with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, playing works by Ravel, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.
The Swedish singer has spent three decades making moody, romantic music that drifts through trip-hop, electronica, indie-pop, downtempo and jazz. He arrives in Barcelona with his 14th album, Backstage, and a live show billed as hypnotic, elegant and emotionally rich.
One of the best-known and most influential Russian street artists will speak in Barcelona this month. Slava Ptrk worked for years in Yekaterinburg and now lives in France. His talk promises a personal perspective on the art scene, mapping the major trends, key names and defining projects of the past four years.
The legendary British band heads to Barcelona with their new album Antidepressants. After its release, the group made it clear they were not interested in becoming a retro act and wanted to pull in younger listeners instead. The result is another reinvention: their signature identity is intact, but the sound now leans into a sleek, postmodern post-punk edge.
Critics have been hugely receptive to the new record, so it looks like Suede really have managed to dodge the nostalgia trap.
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Matisse “Inside the Home” exhibition
From 27 March, CaixaForum
CaixaForum opens a major exhibition dedicated to Henri Matisse, exploring the artist’s creative evolution and influence on those around him. Much of the work will arrive from Paris’s Centre Pompidou.
The show includes paintings by Matisse himself alongside works by his contemporaries and later artists, ranging from German Fauves and Russian neo-primitivists to American painting of the 1940s.
