Calçotada de Valls Festival 2016: 25 years of the sauce competition

The 2016 edition

• Date: 31 Jan 2016
• Location: Valls (Tarragona)
• Edition: 35th Gran Festa de la Calçotada

The sauce competition celebrates its anniversary

The programme highlighted the anniversary of the sauce competition, held in the Plaça del Blat together with the growers competition. The weekend included a food and craft market on Passeig de l’Estació and a Mostra de Cuina del Calçot on Jaume Mercadé street, with preparations accompanied by DO Tarragona wines.

Sunday morning brought cooking demonstrations, dances and parades. The tasting took place in Plaça de la Zeta, with tables around the old town and at the Societat Agrícola. This arrangement belongs to the festival's history and should not be confused with today's venue layout.

Documentation: Gran Festa 2016 Programme — organisation brochure

Japanese television returned to Valls

Previous information from ACN announced the arrival of a team of nine people from the Japanese channel NTV to record the festival. The international presence was not limited to observing from behind a camera: the participation of presenters in the calçots-eating contest was planned.

The eyewitness account later published on Calsots.com identifies Toshi Onishi among the contestants and explains that he finished fourth. The same chronicle records the triumph of Adrià Wegrzyn. The organisation's historical table sets its result at 178 calçots and 3,115 grams. The archive allows us to distinguish here what was announced before the event and what was documented once it was held.

Documentation: ACN/Reusdigital: Valls expects more than 40,000 people (21 January 2016) · Calsots.com: Summary of the Calçotada Festa 2016 · Gran Festa: official table of winners of the calçots eating contest

Watch the festival through its contests

The three competitions provide different readings of the same tradition. The anniversary of the sauce places the preparation that accompanies calçot in the foreground; the growers show the product, while the Pati test concentrates the show. Reading them together helps to understand why the Gran Festa archive includes much more than a classification.

The schedules on this sheet are a selection from the 2016 brochure. The entire document is linked as historical material, and any visit to a future edition must be organised with that year's programme.

A look at the 2016 programme

Selection of documented activities from that edition.

1. 10:0031 Jan 2016

   Cooking demonstrations

   Plaça de l'Oli

2. 10:3031 Jan 2016

   sauce and grower competitions

   Plaça del Blat

3. 13:0031 Jan 2016

   Calçots eating contest

   El Pati

4. 14:0031 Jan 2016

   Awards ceremony

   El Pati

Explore more of the festival

Learn about the calçots eating contest and check its record →

Check the next edition of 2027 and discover the calçotada restaurants from Valls and Alt Camp.

Return to archive of all editions →