Sitges – Flower Carpet Festival 2013 (Corpus Christi Fiesta)

Just a week after my first visit to this lovely seaside town we took the train to make another visit, this time to see the famous Flower Carpet Festival, or the Corpus Christi Fiesta in Sitges.

The festival is held annually 60 days after Easter Sunday. The residents of Sitges wake up very early and neighbours, schools and organised groups lay a carpet of flowers on the narrow streets of the Old Town. The carpeted streets are called ‘catifes’ and the ‘carpets’ are the ‘catifes de flors’. Unlike in Girona, where they used whole flowers to make decorations here they use parts of the flowers/plants such as grass, tree bark, rice shells, coffee beans, flower petals and seeds. They use designs borrowed from different sources, some of them themed, some of them made up or based on a child’s. The result is absolutely unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

It is really hard to take good photos of the ‘carpets’ as they are quite long and the camera cannot capture the whole length.

I’ve tried to take photos of the original designs and the finished projects so you can compare them.

As they used natural ingredients the carpets are 3D but you can only see this when you get down to street level.

This was my favourite. If I understood right this was the ‘carpet’ of the Fishermen’s Association and this year was the first time they participated. I really liked that they used recycled material as well in their display.

There were many other events as well such as a religious procession or a bonsai exhibition but unfortunately we didn’t have time to see everything. There was one thing I was dying to see though and we rushed to have a glimpse before it finished. It was called the ‘Egg dance’ and I couldn’t find any other information than this. We were really curious about it as we just couldn’t imagine what it could have been. When we got to the place where it was we burst out laughing. We thought of many things from the name but we would never have imagined this!

The Festival only lasts for a day so it’s worth timing your visit around the event. The carpets are there all day long so you’ll have plenty of time to pick one of the 17 beaches and adore the sun or have a lovely meal at one of the restaurants.