Valls Calçotada Festival 2019: stories and competitors

The 2019 edition

• Date: 27 Jan 2019
• Location: Valls (Tarragona)
• Edition: 38th Gran Festa de la Calçotada

A festival that filled the centre of Valls

The organisation's website collected an estimate of about 40,000 visitors. Cooking demonstrations, sauce and grower contests, and popular tastings spread the activity throughout the city. The chronicle also highlighted the presence of Japanese tourists and international media. The attendance figure is a published estimate at the time, not a nominal count.

Documentation: Gran Festa: Valls saw the Gran Festa with 40,000 visitors

Carlos Fontecha and a podium with Diana Andrade

Carlos Fontecha of Rubí won with 184 calçots weighing 2.245 kilos. It was his second appearance, after finishing third the year before. Alexander Staab and Diana Andrade joined him on the podium; Tarragona Digital identified Andrade as the first woman to achieve a podium finish.

The contest concentrated the public in the Pati for 45 minutes. Units and weight help understand the result, but they describe an exceptional competition; They are not a portion of calçotada. Each edition incorporates different participants, stories and outcomes.

Documentation: Tarragona Digital: chronicle of 27 January 2019

Sauce and crafts: a Miravet mortar

The note dedicated to the sauce competition documents a singular detail: the low Miravet mortar made expressly by the artisan Josep Papasseit. Salses Fruits S&P sponsored the test for the third consecutive year. In previous years, a Santes Creus sauce boat by Jaume Satorra and another Miravet mortar model had been chosen. The 2019 archive thus preserves a relationship between the cuisine of calçotada and the ceramics of the territory.

Documentation: Gran Festa: Salses Fruits S&P sponsors sauce Calçotada Valls

How to consult this memory from 2019

This archive preserves the documented events of the day. Read it alongside the 2018 edition, when Adrià Wegrzyn set his record, and our eating-contest guide. Later editions show how both the results and festival venues evolved. This report is not a programme for a future event.

A look at the 2019 programme

Selection of documented activities from that edition.

1. 13:0027 Jan 2019

   Popular tasting

   Oli and Zeta squares

2. 13:0027 Jan 2019

   Calçots eating contest

   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 →