Setmana i Fira Modernista d’Alcoi: Art Nouveau takes the streets — Alcoy, Spain

Alcoy — Alcoi in Valencian — is a mill town wedged into a valley in the province of Alicante, and it was rich when Art Nouveau arrived. The same industrial expansion that in 1868 produced the Círculo Industrial, the club where the city’s manufacturers met, paid for the ornamented façades that still stand in the streets around Plaça d’Espanya. From 21 to 27 September 2026 Alcoy gives that period a week of its own — the Setmana Modernista — closing with the Fira Modernista, the street fair, on 26 and 27 September.

It is less a museum exercise than a dressing-up of the town itself. The Mercat de Sant Roc sells modernist clothing and accessories; the Casa del Pavo opens for guided tours by day and, on several evenings, for visits by moonlight; a stained-glass workshop has people making miniature replicas by hand. Talks at the Fundación Mutua Levante look at the Art Deco woman of the 1920s and at music and its spaces in modernist Alcoi, and three local historians present new research on Gonzalo Barrachina, the nineteenth-century composer born here.

The two closing days are the ones that fill the streets. On 26 September a re-enactment sets out from the Parterre to recreate the 1916 inauguration of the Viaducte de Canalejas, the iron bridge that stitched the town across its ravine — the director has asked participants to dress as working people rather than as the bourgeoisie, which tells you something about how the town reads its own past. The same evening the Agrupació Lírica El Trabajo performs the operetta Los viejos compadres in the Parc de la Glorieta, free to anyone who turns up.

Alcoy is an hour inland from Alicante and rarely appears on Art Nouveau itineraries, which tend to run from Barcelona to Valencia and stop. The week is the easiest moment of the year to see why it should.

Practical details

• When: 21 to 27 September 2026 — Setmana Modernista; Fira Modernista in the streets on 26 and 27 September
• Where: Alcoy (Alcoi), Alicante, Valencian Community, Spain — venues across the city centre, including Plaça d’Espanya, the Mercat de Sant Roc, Casa del Pavo, Fundación Mutua Levante, Centre Cultural Mario Silvestre and the Parc de la Glorieta
• Admission: most activities are free; some workshops charge for materials
• Organised by: Ajuntament d’Alcoi with the city’s modernist associations, among them the Grup de Recreació Modernista d’Alcoi and the Associació d’Amics del Modernisme
• Programme: published by Turisme Alcoi

Cultural Heritage Online lists this festival for readers travelling in the Valencian Community this autumn.