The street art of Penelles

Detail from wall mural in Penelles (Source: own photo)

Some 130 kilometres west of Barcelona, near the city of Lleida, lies the small farming village of Penelles. From the outside, the village looks identical to countless other farming villages in Western Catalonia. Small, with just over 400 people living in sandstone houses packed tightly along its narrow streets Penelles sits on slightly raised ground surrounded by vast plains beneath big sky.

Like other village-dwellers in this region, the good farming folk of Penelles struggled for years to eke out a living from land which all too often receives too little rain. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, in 2016, they came up with the idea of inviting street artists from all over world to decorate the village walls.

The hope was that street art would inject fresh blood into the town to counter depopulation, which devastates so many rural towns in this part of Spain. It seems to have worked. Penelles is now adorned with more than 170 works of mural art, a number which is sure to increase. In the month of May next year Penelles will celebrate the 10^th anniversary of what has now become the Gargar Festival – Penelles' annual celebration of street art.

I spent the morning walking through the town and captured a few images, which I am posting below for your delight. All the shots are my own.

One of the things I love about Spain is that this country is still bursting with creative energy after the long years of fascist repression under Franco. May Spain's renaissance never end!  

The End