A FESTA MAJOR, READ AS A CIVIC INVENTION
In 1983, Granollers revived a Festa Major that had lost its place in the city’s calendar. A story about two brickmakers from 1897 became a public contest between Blancs and Blaus. The format spread through the Vallès and later appeared, adapted to local histories, in other Catalan towns.
Follow the turn from worksite anecdote to public machinery.GRANOLLERS · VALLÈS ORIENTAL1897 → 1983 → THE RIPPLE
THE SHORT VERSION
The modern story of Granollers begins with a calendar problem. The Festa Major had long been tied to Sant Esteve and, until 1857, was held on 26 December. In 1858 it moved to 1–5 September because winter was too cold for the kind of public celebration the town wanted. The patron remained. The season changed.
That change points to a larger fact. A Festa Major lives through an agreement between memory, weather, institutions, associations and a town’s wish to meet in public. Granollers kept revising that agreement: in 1930 the celebration moved again, to the last Thursday of August; after the Civil War it entered a long period of stagnation; in the late 1970s young people and democratic institutions began looking for a form that could feel alive again.
In 1983, the answer was practical. Give the town two named sides, give them work to do, give residents reasons to join, and keep the rivalry playful. Blancs and Blaus became a civic invitation. The people who entered the festival would help make it.
THE LONG TURN
The 1983 model had a long prehistory. It followed a century of adjustments, decline, research and small experiments.
After centuries of a 26 December celebration around Sant Esteve, Granollers moved its Festa Major to 1–5 September. Cold was a practical reason. The change also showed that continuity could survive a new setting.
Open sourceThe remembered wager between El Rayo and Maynou asked who could make more bricks in an hour. A contemporary local newspaper records a contest between Bonet and Maynou. The archive gives different names, while the scene stays consistent: supporters chose sides, watched a test of skill and shared food at the end.
Open sourceAfter meetings with local societies, the municipal celebration moved to the last Thursday of August. Associations, balls, concerts and popular acts were already part of the festival’s ecology.
Open sourceThe postwar decades brought stagnation. After the 1950s, Ascensió became the city’s main festival and Festa Major increasingly functioned as a pause in the calendar. Democratic change brought the Murga and other experiments. A shared grammar had yet to take hold.
Open sourceYoung people linked to AV Sota el Camí Ral and the Casal del Jove turned the brickmakers’ story into the Blancs and Blaus model. A jury, a competition and the promise that the winning colla would choose the next year’s pregoner made participation visible and consequential.
Open sourceNearby towns adapted the two-side, colour-and-challenge logic to their own histories. The clearest documented chain runs through the Vallès. Elsewhere, elements of the format appear in local versions shaped by different places.
Open sourceTHE HINGE
The anecdote mattered because Granollers gave it a public job.
Two brickmakers compete. The town supplies supporters, attention and an ending around a shared snack. The scene lasts in memory because everyone can follow it: a skill, a clock and two sides.
Its strength lies in a social form people can repeat.
Open sourceA youth proposal gave the wager a programme, a jury and two collas. Blancs and Blaus invited residents to organise, perform, compete and return the following year.
The old story became a rule for making the present festival.
Open sourceThe impact study counted 272 programmed acts and approximately 80,000 participants. Organised citizen participation appeared in 240 of those acts. At this scale, the fiesta is a network of associations, crews, public services and visitors.
The festival’s basic unit is the town’s ability to produce many acts together.
Open sourceWHAT TRAVELLED
Catalan festivity has a long history of local festivals, associations, processions, fire, dance, castells and reinvention. Granollers’s specific contribution was to make one participatory grammar unusually visible; other towns adapted parts of it.
The grammar moves through four steps. Find a local story people can retell. Give the public named sides that welcome newcomers. Make participation visible through tests, performances, food, colour and collective work. Turn the result into a civic memory that returns each year.
The four elements depend on one another. Colours need a local story. Competition needs hospitality. A programme needs ordinary organisers who will carry it into the street. Granollers held those elements together and gave the winning side a part in the next chapter: it chose the following year’s pregoner.
The influence appears as a chain of translations. In Llinars del Vallès, Mollet, Santa Eulàlia de Ronçana, l’Ametlla, Montornès, Canovelles and Sant Celoni, the names, number of groups and tests changed. In Montmeló, the model became a series of challenges that ended after a decade. Outside the Vallès, Premià de Mar and el Masnou adapted the impulse to maritime and local historical identities. The evidence lies in each town’s local story and the participatory form built around it.
The documented chain is strongest in the Vallès and nearby towns. For other Catalan cases, the evidence is firmer for adaptation and resemblance than for a single direct line of transmission.
Vermells / Blaus
A two-colour rivalry carried into a nearby town, with its own local names and festive identity.
Morats / Torrats
The colour logic became a new pair of sides with names drawn from Mollet’s own identity.
Joc dels Colors
Four colours and a game structure widened the field beyond a simple two-team contest.
Dalt / Baix
A local geography, upper and lower, supplied the division that Granollers supplied through colour.
Bartomeus / Pereantons
Named local identities replaced a generic red-versus-blue template.
Cans / Ovelles · Senys / Negres
By the end of the decade, the grammar had become legible across several Vallès towns.
Melons / Creuats
Ten years of tests, including rope pulling and donation challenges, also showed how hard the model is to sustain.
Pirates / Premianencs · local historical sides
Beyond the region, the same participatory two-side impulse was adapted to maritime histories.
THE FESTIVAL FROM THE INSIDE
Earlier festivals were often organised by institutions for a public that came to watch. Blancs and Blaus put residents to work: joining a colla, rehearsing, building, cooking, making a costume, carrying a prop, judging a test, hosting a visitor or keeping the street alive. The city provides infrastructure and public responsibility. Associations and participants share the making.
That structure made the model portable. Each town could find its own reason for choosing sides and its own fair way for people to meet through the choice. The sides might be colours, neighbourhoods, animals, occupations, geography or remembered characters. The lasting invitation is simple: take temporary responsibility for the town’s atmosphere.
The story also worked inward. In 1990, a castells competition during Festa Major brought together Blancs, Castellers de Barcelona and Minyons de Terrassa. The excitement helped lead to the founding of Xics de Granollers in January 1991, open to people from both sides. The festival helped create an association that outlived the week.
THE COST OF SCALE
The same impact study that describes the model’s reach also names its costs: concentration, noise, waste, safety and environmental pressure, as well as uneven participation across neighbourhoods. A festival that asks a whole city to take part must keep asking who has access to the time, space, money and confidence required to join.
Other organisers chose their own names, rules and endings; some abandoned the format. The evidence supports a narrower conclusion: Granollers offered one of the clearest modern examples of rebuilding a local festival around organised participation, playful rivalry and a public contest over the next chapter.
Rivalry works as a bridge into belonging. It becomes a barrier when sides turn into closed clubs, competition overwhelms welcome or scale hides the people who are missing.
THE PORTABLE IDEA
Granollers’s lasting contribution was the decision to turn a local memory into shared work. Other fiestas can borrow that principle; each must give it a history and a form of its own.
SourcesSOURCES
Municipal history and the city archive provide the account of Granollers’s calendar, the 1897 wager and the 1983 revival. Regional reporting and a comparative festival study trace adaptations through the Vallès and beyond. The 2025 participation figures and pressure points come from the Diputació de Barcelona / CERC impact study. The wider Catalan context comes from the Xarxa d’Arxius Comarcals.
The city’s account of the patronal calendar, the 1897 brickmakers’ wager, the 1983 revival and the Blancs/Blaus rules.
The seven-page proposal that translated the remembered wager into a new participatory festival.
A municipal retrospective on the 2023 fortieth edition and the model’s two founding ideas: festive rivalry and mass participation.
The 2026 study of the 2025 festival: participation, reach, economic and social value, governance, pressure points and the model’s export.
A documented tour of colour-based teams and festival competitions in the Vallès, nearby towns and selected cases beyond the region.
An earlier comparative account of the model’s spread, including examples outside the Vallès such as Premià de Mar and el Masnou.
The story of how a Festa Major castells competition helped lead to the founding of Xics de Granollers in 1991.
A wider history of Catalan local festivals, associations and the cultural reactivation of the democratic period.