Avante! Festival
Every year, in the first weekend of September, the party holds a festival called the Avante! Festival (Portuguese: Festa do Avante!). After taking place in different locations around Lisbon, like the Lisbon International Fair, Ajuda or Loures, it is now held in Amora, a town near Seixal, on land bought by the Party after a massive fundraising campaign in the early 1990s. The Party considered this campaign to be the only way to avoid the boycott organised by the owners of the previous festival grounds, a boycott that ultimately resulted in the Festival not being held in 1987
The festival attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors. The events themselves consist of a three-day festival of music, with hundreds of Portuguese and international bands and artists across five different stages, ethnography, gastronomy, debates, a books and music fair, theatre (Avanteatro), cinema (Cineavante) and sporting events. Several foreign communist parties also participate.
Famous artists, Portuguese and non-Portuguese, have performed at the Festival, including Chico Buarque, Baden Powell, Ivan Lins, Zeca Afonso, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Holly Near, Johnny Clegg, Charlie Haden, Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Tom Paxton, Ska-P, The Soviet Circus Company, the Kuban Cossack Choir, Dexys Midnight Runners, The Band, Hevia, Brigada Victor Jara, Adriano Correia de Oliveira, Carlos Paredes, Jorge Palma, Manoel de Oliveira, Babylon Circus, and many others.
The preparation of the party begins right after the end of the previous festival. Hundreds of the Party's members and friends, mostly young people, volunteer for the hard work of building a small town in a few months.
- Avante! Festival main website
- Complete list of the artists present in the 27 editions of the Festival
Read more about this topic: Portuguese Communist Party
Famous quotes containing the word festival:
“Don’t you know there are 200 temperance women in this county who control 200 votes. Why does a woman work for temperance? Because she’s tired of liftin’ that besotted mate of hers off the floor every Saturday night and puttin’ him on the sofa so he won’t catch cold. Tonight we’re for temperance. Help yourself to them cloves and chew them, chew them hard. We’re goin’ to that festival tonight smelling like a hot mince pie.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)