Festival Al-Kalat - Alcalá's annual music festival

In August 2004 Matthew Coman, an Englishman who had made his home in Alcalá, staged the town's first music festival. He invited colleagues from a group of classical musicians, known as The Soloists of London, to spend a week in the pueblo and give concerts in the beautiful patio of the Sagrada Familia school (SAFA), a former convent on the Plaza Alta.

The Soloists of London in the SAFA patio

Poster from the fifth festival in 2008

In 2009 the festival including a performance by a group of young musicians from around the province, after a week of rehearsals under Coman's supervision. This inspired a painting by the late Jesús Cuesta Arana, which was used for that year's poster.

Poster artwork from the 2009 festival,
by the late Jesús Cuesta Arana

Young musicians rehearsing for their concert

For the following few years the festival remained focused on classical music, even staging a production of La Traviata in the church. Tickets weren't available in advance in those days, and numbers were not limited - you can imagine what it was like on one of the hottest nights of the year with nearly three hundred opera fans squeezed into the pews.

Then the town hall decided to widen the festival's appeal and added add a free flamenco concert on the Plaza Alta. This, for me anyway, has been the highlight of the festival ever since.

Flamenco on the Plaza Alta 2014, "El Cachorro de Paterna"

After Coman left Alcalá, the Ayuntamiento took over the running of the festival and shifted its emphasis towards popular music, dropping the word "international" from the name and mainly booking performers from Andalucia on subsidised tours of the region. For the last ten years or so the festival has comprised three "big name" ticketed concerts in the SAFA, and three free events - a classical concert in the church, a night of poetry and music in the old castle, and a grand flamenco gala in the Plaza Alta. The price of tickets has crept up from €1 in 2004 to €18 this year, leaving it out of reach for some, and there have been empty seats at a few of the concerts recently. But at least a ticket now guarantees you a seat ...

This year's festival has just finished and I leave you with some photos by my favourite photographers, Gabriel de Kadt and Adrián Jiménez, who take far better pictures than I could ever do. (And in case you were wondering, "Al-kalat" comes from the Arabic version of Alcalá, meaning the castle.)