Origin

1963The Festa do Marisco was born in 1963, thanks to a group of local residents —fishermen among them— who wanted to celebrate and promote the seafood of O Grove. At the time, some of the ría’s most emblematic shellfish (such as velvet crab, prawns and spider crab) had little commercial outlet and hardly featured on restaurant menus, so the festival was created to make them known and give them the value they deserved. The main aim was to promote a product of the ría that until then had no reach beyond the local area. And so the first edition of this food festival was held on Sunday 6 October 1963, as a modest morning event devoted to tasting the seafood of the ría.
The early yearsFrom the very beginning, the festival had a humble but endearing character. Only a handful of pans of seafood were prepared at that first event in 1963, but there was no lack of enthusiasm. The people of O Grove built handmade stalls from pine wood from the local hills to serve the produce, and threw themselves into promoting the event: in the early years it was common to see locals posted at the entrance to the peninsula, handing visitors little bags of prawns and velvet crabs as a welcome gift. The gesture was meant to surprise outsiders with the quality of the local seafood and invite them to join the festivities. In those first years the celebration took place over a single weekend and had a family, almost improvised atmosphere, but it laid the foundations of a tradition that would soon take firm root.
Growing upOver the years, the Festa do Marisco grew in size, length and impact. As its popularity increased, the Concello do Grove decided to give it institutional support and turn it into the major event it is today. In the 1970s, for example, a colourful Seafood Song Festival was added, inspired by music contests such as San Remo or Benidorm, which enjoyed some fame at the time. Open-air dances, folk groups and other leisure activities were also added to the programme. From a two-day celebration it grew to several days and later to more than a week, with performances and entertainment for all ages. Along the way, the festival’s identity also took shape: the spider crab was adopted as its official emblem —shown holding a bowl of wine in its claws— and the annual Centolos de Ouro (Golden Spider Crabs) awards were created to honour people and institutions with close ties to the town. (Curiously, the spider crab is the great absentee from the festival’s dishes: in October it is in its closed season for breeding and catching it is forbidden.)
TodayFrom the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the Festa do Marisco became more professional and gained national renown. Its facilities were expanded (with large marquees for mass tastings) and its cultural side was strengthened with big concerts, cookery contests, exhibitions and activities for young and old. This evolution culminated in an important official recognition: in 2013, coinciding with its 50th anniversary, the Festa do Marisco of O Grove was declared a Festival of National Tourist Interest, a title that boosted its profile beyond Galicia. In recent years, the Concello do Grove and the Galician community have been working to obtain the status of Festival of International Tourist Interest, a category the festival already aspires to given its growing reputation beyond Spain’s borders. The Festa do Marisco has thus become a landmark of the Galician festival calendar, true to its original spirit while adapting to new times and audiences.

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