Wine Must Festival
La Granada, like many other towns in the Penedès region, has a strong wine-making tradition. There is a cooperative winery in the town and various other wineries where the winemaker’s art transforms grapes into a young wine that is very popular all over the country. The must is the result of the pressed grapes, so it can start being enjoyed just a few days after harvesting. After the summer festivals of patron saints’ days and the grape harvest, many towns organise a festival dedicated to everything must-related.
In La Granada, the Festa del Most has become a really ‘big’ little festival over the years. The main activities are public food and wine-tasting sessions, a farmers’ market, concerts, dances and a procession featuring elements of traditional culture. But the most highly anticipated event of the festival is unquestionably the hoisting of a donkey up the bell tower, a spectacle based on a local legend.
Hoisting a donkey up and down the bell tower of the village church can arouse the most varied reactions and it has often been a point of controversy among the local community. As it happens, a number of villages in Catalonia claim the legend of the donkey and the bell tower as their own, but only two – La Granada during the Wine Must Festival, and Solsona, for Carnival – have been bold enough to actually hoist the animal up the tower.