Temps de Flors Flower Festival

Temps de Flors Flower Festival
For nine days every May, the town of Girona,
just north of Barcelona, becomes home to
the famous spring flower festival, Temps de
Flors, or the “time of flowers”. Based mainly
in the old town district of Girona, the festival
comprises of stunning flower displays in public and private gardens, monuments, churches and other historic landmarks. The doors
to some of the most beautiful buildings in the
city open to the public for these few days –
making it both a tourist destination and a local gathering for curious residents of Girona. Each year there are
at least 400,000 visitors.
Temps de Flors was held for the first
time in 1954, organized by the
“Sección Femenina” (the women’s
organization) a group that started
before the Spanish Civil War. While
men did military service, the women
would join the Sección Femenina,
seeing it as their way of serving their
country. The success of the first Temps de Flors forced the women to
continue the festival and promote the city’s rich
heritage. What began as a small flower show and
competition has become a major world-renowned
floral festival. Dozens of gardening enthusiasts,
floral traders, students, artists, designers and
landscape architects join together each year to
decorate the old town of Girona. Most of the flower displays are traditional in their design, yet many
use innovative materials and are arranged in unexpected ways.