There’s no party like a produce party. Hitting up a bean festival in Bulgaria offers unrivaled insight into local life, and the path to understanding German culture runs through the asparagus fields.
Annual calendars once revolved around agricultural seasons punctuated by festivals: communal sighs of relief at the end of harvest, in the form of an epic feast. The descendants of those celebrations, listed below in chronological order for the year, honor agrarian histories and promote unique regional foods, with pop concerts, giant anthropomorphic vegetables, and eating contests. And (still) epic feasts.
Every part of a calçotada is an event—including cooking the calçots themselves.
Photo by BearFotos/Shutterstock
Gran Festa de la Calçotada
When: Last Sunday in January
Where: Valls, Spain
In late January, the smell of charring alliums wafts up from Valls, an hour west of Barcelona, and the heart of Catalonia’s calçot country. Calçots are long, thin sweet onions, and the event kicks off their season with a large-scale calçotada, the beloved feast that is an integral ritual of Catalan winter. Leading the procession are celebrants donning capgrossos (giant headpieces) in the shape of both calçots and the ingredients to the sauce that accompanies the calçots (garlic, olive oil, vinegar, etc.). A full calçotada meal follows, with the onions, grilled meats, oranges for dessert, and plenty of local red wine.
Where to stay: Felix Hotel is the closest to the festival, just five minutes away, and serves a calçotada in its restaurant. Torre Nova Resort and Spa is a bit farther but grows its calçots right on the property.
Sagra del Carciofo Romanesco
When: Mid-April (April 11–13, 2025)
Where: Ladispoli, Italy
Enormous sculptures made from romanesco (purple-tinged Roman artichokes) and their spiky green leaves pepper the plaza of the seaside resort town of Ladispoli during its April party for the vegetable. Artichoke festivals are a staple of Italian spring, but Ladispoli, just outside Rome, claims to be the first and—because of how well the plant grows in the volcanic soil nearby—the best. The event centers on a feast of artichoke dishes, a concert, and fireworks. The chess tournaments are less of a draw, but the main attraction at the festival is still the fried artichoke wedges handed out free to attendees.
Where to stay: Just south of town, the palatial mansion of La Posta Vecchia looks out over a private black-sand beach. Its restaurant joins the festivities with an Artichoke Gastronomic Experience, a tasting menu that incorporates the thistle into each course, including the aperitivo.
If you didn’t love watercress before, you just might after the Arlesford Watercress Festival.
Photos by Russell Sach
Alresford Watercress Festival
When: Third Sunday in May (May 18, 2025)
Where: Alresford, United Kingdom
Alresford is a riverside town of colorful Georgian houses southwest of London, and every year it hosts a huge, free celebration of the crop that has grown here since Victorian times. The fun starts with a parade led by the Watercress King and Queen, who wear their watercress crowns and hand out the season’s first harvest. It continues with a watercress eating contest (last year’s winner downed an 80-gram bag in 28.98 seconds) and a competition for the most innovative use of the peppery perennial. Last year’s winner? Watercress cough medicine.
Where to stay: Commit to the bit by booking a cabin or safari tent at the nearby Watercress Lodges, conveniently located on the Watercress Line, a heritage steam train that takes visitors right to the festival.
Spargelfest
When: First weekend of June
Where: Beelitz, Germany
All of Germany goes nuts for spargelzeit—white asparagus season—and Beelitz, just outside Berlin, is even more obsessed, as evidenced by its asparagus museum and Spargelfest. The annual asparagus festival began a century ago, as a thank you celebration for the seasonal field hands who picked the vegetable. Now, it features pop concerts, endless asparagus dishes, and an asparagus queen. She gets to pick the first stalk of the season, then leads a parade of asparagus floats from her own float—an asparagus pyramid. Throughout the festival, cartoonish mascots Spargelino and Spargelina pose for photos with crowds of asparagus-hungry visitors.
Where to stay: Hotel Stadt Beelitz gets guests as close as possible to the asparagus festival action, while the Jakobs Landmotel sits on an asparagus farm at the edge of town.
Warm up those arms: You’ll need them for chucking tomatoes—and for protecting your head from incoming red fruit.
Photo by BearFotos/Shutterstock
La Tomatina
When: Last Wednesday of August (August 27, 2025)
Where: Buñol, Spain
Everybody loves a good food fight, so when a group of friends began one in 1945, the town joined in. Now, the world does, too, with 20,000 people descending on Buñol annually to chuck tomatoes at each other. The crowd gets hyped by watching the greased-pole climbing contest, which lures contestants with a ham leg at the pole’s top. When the trucks of tomatoes pull in, folks riding in the beds launch the first ones into the crowd, then it’s every person for themselves in a pulpy, red, chaotic frenzy.
Where to stay: Buñol is a small town, but Valencia is close. Book the Yours Boutique Hotel or Santa Clara Palace, both near the Valencia-Nord station for easy access to the hourly train.
Smilyan Bean Festival
When: Late October
Where: Smilyan, Bulgaria
fest-bg.com/event/smilyan-bean-festival-2/?lang=en
High in the mountains that divide Greece and Bulgaria, the village of Smilyan radiates pride in its beans. After the year’s crop has been harvested, more than 8,000 visitors (four times the population) gather and begin celebrating by firing a bean cannon, on which wooden beans take the place of wheels. Kids race with spoons full of beans, dozens of bean dishes compete for awards, and artists display their bean-based art. Festivalgoers can also pop into the local bean museum and add a bean to the giant communal mosaic.
Where to stay: Hotel Smolena holds off on closing for the season until after the bean festival, when it puts the kitchen to work preparing a bean-based feast for the ages.
