"The value of the festival is precisely the daily impact on the towns and their people"

Carme Crespo has dedicated many years to marketing and advertising, but she never thought she would end up being the manager and director of the Itinera Festival. “Directing this project is one of those things that life puts in front of you when you least expect it,” she confesses. Itinera was born in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, on the initiative of Marcel Marata. It has been two and a half years since Marcel died in a traffic accident, precisely when he was on his way to the opening ceremony of the 4th edition of the Festival. Carme Crespo, his wife, decided to take over. “From the first moment I was clear that it could not stop. Firstly, because I believed in it profoundly; I had been very closely involved and helped in every way I could. But above all, because he felt immensely proud of having created it,” she declares.

Created between the Association of Micropobles of Catalonia and the company Aktive, the Itinera Festival was born with the aim of publicizing the territory's micropobles and their charms accompanied by quality music in a reduced format. The festival's musical offering is diverse: from black music artists (jazz, blues, soul, and gospel), to traditional music, classical, and other styles from around the world.

The first concert of the festival was on May 23, 2021, in Penelles, with Andrea Motis, Joan Chamorro, and Josep Traver as the main artists. That same year, the festival won the Fundació Catalunya Cultura Award, and since then, the project has not stopped growing. The 110 concerts from six years ago are now almost 200. The project's intention is clear: to create synergies, bringing other types of musical culture closer to the towns of Catalonia and, at the same time, giving recognition to unknown places in the Catalan territory. “There are two axes: one is to universalize culture, giving the inhabitants of a micro-village the possibility to listen to another type of music without having to travel; the other is to make the heritage of these municipalities known, to put them on the map; finally, it's about creating a platform to showcase original talent,” explains Carme.

In Catalonia, there are 484 micro-villages, populations with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. They represent a population of 195,214 people in total, 2.5% of the Catalan population, but these municipalities occupy an area equivalent to half of the entire country. Carme explains that they are planning an ambitious future: they would like to organize concerts in 300 different micro-villages. “When this model is consolidated, we would like to relaunch the expansion to other autonomous communities, an idea that Marcel had already started,” she adds.

The wide variety of concerts they offer makes it impossible for Carme to attend them all, but she immensely enjoys all the places she didn't know and can now discover thanks to the work. At the same time, the public's response is what motivates her to move forward with the project: “For the mayor or anyone from the audience to come up and say they've really enjoyed themselves is very beautiful. Seeing that emotion is what truly gives meaning to the work we do. It may seem very naive, but these concerts create spaces for community and social cohesion. The value of the festival is precisely its daily impact on the towns and their people”.

Having found the balance between the festival's format and its connection with the population of micro-towns is no coincidence; it is the result of understanding that the functioning of these municipalities cannot be the same as the rest: a large part of the essence of this itinerant festival is that there will never be two identical concerts. Each town and each territory has its own characteristics that force us to think of unique shows adapted to the place. “We cannot demand that a very small town hall have the entire program for August or October decided by February. You cannot treat those who are different the same”.