Festival Internacional de Habaneras y Polifonía

Torrevieja's annual international choral festival, held each August, celebrating the habanera — a Cuban song form that arrived with sailors returning from the salt trade and has been rooted here ever since.

The Festival Internacional de Habaneras y Polifonía is held each year in late July and early August, and it is both more serious and more enjoyable than most music festivals attached to Spanish towns of this size. Choral groups from Spain, Cuba, and countries as far afield as Japan and Argentina compete across several evenings, performing in the open air in front of the Casino del Mar on the seafront. The habanera — a form that sits between the ballad and the sea shanty, with a distinctive slow rhythm and often melancholy lyrics about the sea and departure — is the centrepiece, but the polyphony category brings in a broader range of choral music. The competition format means every performance is taken seriously.

The outdoor setting, with the audience spread across the promenade and the sea behind the stage, is a significant part of what makes the festival work. Attendance is free for much of the programme, with ticketed seating available for the main competition evenings. The town fills up during festival week — advance booking for accommodation is essential — and the atmosphere along the paseo before and after performances is excellent. Even visitors who arrive with no particular interest in choral music tend to find that hearing habaneras performed well, in the town where the tradition has been kept alive for more than 150 years, is unexpectedly moving.

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A story
The habanera arrived in Torrevieja the same way many things did: on a boat carrying salt. In the 19th century, Torrevieja's salt ships made regular runs to the Caribbean and returned carrying goods, ideas, and music. The habanera — a slow, syncopated song form developed in Havana in the first half of the 1800s — crossed the Atlantic in both directions, and the sailors and merchants who ran the salt trade brought it home. By the late 19th century it was woven into the town's social fabric: sung at the Casino, at the waterfront, at gatherings in private houses. The festival that celebrates it now has been running since 1955 and draws choral groups from across Spain and the world. That a small salt town on the Costa Blanca is one of the leading venues for a Cuban musical tradition is one of those historical curiosities that makes travel interesting.

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