Rototom Sunsplash is the biggest reggae festival in Europe

Rototom Sunsplash is the largest reggae gathering in Europe: the 17th edition received more than 150.000 visitors from all over Europe in the Benicàssim area and surroundings and the festival workers did their best to live up to the great expectations.

For many days reggae music dominated the scene: concerts started at sunset, the Dancehall area would pack up with rhythm and dance, the Main Stage would welcome the most important reggae names around the world and in the meanwhile, the Lion Stage would give a chance to the best upcoming talents.
Mornings and afternoons were dedicated to relax and social engagement. Debates, reggae and rasta meetings took place, as well as movie screenings, photo-exhibitions, percussion, African dance, capoeira, didjeridoo, meditation and alternative medicine classes.
A team of professional youth workers organised entertaining activities for the many children that fill the festival area every year, while the international cuisine and market stalls offered the visitors a very unique and multicolored setting 24 hours a day.
Through years, the cultural area of Sunsplash has turned into an authentic breeding ground of minds, able to detect the great shifts that European society has experienced in terms of civil rights, anti-racism, economic changes and more. Some of the world’s most notable intellectuals have been welcomed at the festival, which has been acknowledged by UNESCO as Exemplary Event in the International Decade for the Culture of Peace and Non-violence, due to its engagement in favour of a peace culture. The great effort towards the environment, has earned it The Greener Festival Award two years in a row.

Last summer the 17th edition of the festival was held for the very first time in Spain and given the great success, Benicàssim will host the event once again in 2011, from August 18th to 27th. The festival will not change its format, which combines music shows with collateral activities.

The main goals that Rototom Sunsplash has set in this new Spanish season are to be consistent with its history and values in the new location, to push the Spanish reggae scene and its distinguishing traits and to keep on bringing Europe closer to the Caribbean, by making the most of the cultural, historical and language connections between Spain and America, that also involves many other countries on the other side of the Atlantic.
Rototom Sunsplash: sun, sea and reggae on the Mediterranean coasts.