The El Patio prison festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary at Wad-Ras prison in Barcelona on 16 June, featuring music, circus acts, and humour. Organised by the Girona-based association La Penyora Cultura, the event aims to bring culture inside prisons.
This year's programme includes performances by artists such as Babaflow and El Cigarrito de Después. Festival organisers Consol Ribas and Lluís Llamas emphasised the importance of cultural engagement within prisons, stating that "educating within this environment breaks the social destiny of these individuals."
The anniversary edition arrives with a message of joy and fraternity. The programme also features theatre, juggling, rumba music, and rap. Ester Bertran will present the event, with artists participating voluntarily.
Culture in Prisons
Wad-Ras is Barcelona's last urban prison and the only one in Catalonia with a mothers' module, allowing incarcerated women to live with their children up to the age of three. Ribas and Llamas highlighted the "double condemnation" faced by women in prison, referring to the initial sentence for a crime and the added difficulty of fulfilling societal roles.
La Penyora Cultura, the association behind El Patio, has been organising the itinerant festival for two decades, consistently working to integrate cultural experiences into correctional facilities across Catalonia.
