© Jaime Garcia

On Saturday, June 21, the Universal Forum of Cultures, in conjunction with popular culture groups, organized a festival to promote the values behind this event of world importance: diversity, sustainability and peace.

Traditionally, all cultures have celebrated the summer solstice in order to honor the highest point of the sun as a sign of fertility and abundance. On that magical occasion which is the shortest night of the year, popular culture groups, as the symbolic representatives of ancient customs, invited the general public to experience this special moment and leave behind their bad habits, the aim being to achieve a sustainable, multicultural and peaceful planet.

The festival began in the Barceloneta Park with several groups offering music and traditional Catalan dancing, as well as dance from Asia and Latin America. At the same time, and throughout the afternoon and evening, a group of characters taken from ancient Pyrenean legends—the Manairons—moved through the public collecting messages describing all those things that prevent us from moving towards a diverse, sustainable and peaceful world, and which, therefore, were to be burnt on the fire.

Once the dance performances had finished, there was a display of castellers (human castle builders) led by Barcelona-based teams, and this was followed by a street parade along the Pg. Marítim de la Barceloneta boardwalk. The high point of the festival was the lighting of a large and original bonfire on Sant Miquel beach.

After a great akelarre (a Basque tradition—a meeting of witches and sorcerers) celebrated with fire and led by teams of demons, around 400 members of the participating groups used torches to form the hands which appear in the Forum’s logo; the bonfire was then finally lit while the Great Manairó, from up in his balloon, invited those present to gather once again, with renewed energy, for the start of the Forum on May 9, 2004.