With spring in the air and the heat of summer arriving, one of the best-loved festivities makes a return to our city: Corpus Christi. As ever, and for a festival which now dates back 702 years, Barcelona gets decked out to mark an occasion which is currently enjoying something of a golden era, expanding more that at any other point in its history. Fifty activities organised around much of the city, with twenty activities featuring The Dancing Egg and a similar number of flower carpets make this a very special occasions, a chance to take a stroll and rediscover a number of hidden corners in our neighbourhoods.

This year, after two years of the pandemic and the celebration of 700 years of the Corpus Christi procession, we’ll be concluding this anniversary with some very special activities, such as the exhibition in the Capella de Santa Àgata at the Museu d’Història, the recovery of panoli bread as the traditional Barcelona food for the festival, the full recovery of the Eve of Corpus, the renewed route and format of the procession, the recovery of the Ventalls de Corpus (printed festive documents attached to sticks) and the proclamation of Corpus Christi in Barcelona as a Heritage Festival of National Interest, the second celebration in the city to receive this distinction. All in all, this demonstrates that the festival is as alive as ever.

Yet if there is one iconic element that goes with Corpus Christi in Barcelona, it is The Dancing Egg. There are more than ever this year, with the most traditional ones in the city centre joined by some newcomers, such as the one in El Seminari, one in Carrer de la Llibertat and one in the Parc de Sant Martí. Another feature which continues to experience a boom are the flower carpets, a heritage element of the festival, which can be found for the first time this year at the El Sortidor community centre, in Carrer de Marià Aguiló, in Plaça de Sarrià and at El Seminari. These temporary elements are the result of the work of numerous organisations which halt their usual activity over these dates and work shoulder to shoulder to gift us an explosion of colours and fragrances. We’ll also have a chance again to enjoy the Corpus Christi route around spaces in the city centre.

Because the festival of festivals, as some call it, is a festival for the senses: for taste, with panoli and cherries; for touch, treading on the petals of flower carpets; for sight, with the delicate image of an egg dancing on a spout of water; for hearing, with the ringing of bells and the melody of gralla and flabiol pipes that accompany festive figures, and for smell, with the fragrance of gorse and freshly picked flowers.

The celebration is completed with bell-ringing, exhibitions, talks, dancing, open days, fireworks, organ recitals and the flamboyant procession, which this year adopts a new format and regains part of its historical route. The occasion has become an authentic city festival over the years, the origin of most of the festive figures and traditions which take to the streets to dance today: giants, bighead figures, festive beast figures, devils, human towers, stick dances and more.

We encourage you to take to the streets and enjoy all the activities planned, with so much in store you’re unlikely to do it all!