Santa Eulàlia 2015

Saint Eulàlia is the co-patron saint of Barcelona (along with fellow female saint Mercè, and St Jordi), and her feast day is celebrated on 12 February. Around her feast day, Barcelona puts on celebrations in Eulàlia's honour, which for the last few years have run in parallel with the LLUM BCN ('llum' is 'light' in Catalan) festival, featuring light installations set up around different squares, courtyards and corners of the Ciutat Vella district. Even more illuminating is that this year's edition of LLUM BCN coincides with the United Nations' declaration of 2015 as the International Year of Light. That means that this year will include prestigious collaborators such as Catalonia's Institute of Photonic Sciences and Professional Association of Lighting Designers.

In the fourth edition of the festival, light becomes the raw material of the 20 installations that will transform building façades, squares and a dozen courtyards in Ciutat Vella, each an aesthetic and theatrical project created by different Barcelona schools of design, lighting, architecture and interior design. In the Frederic Marès Museum, for example, students from the Escola Superior d’Art Dramàtic (School of Dramatic Art) have been inspired by the the 13th-century 'Book of the Wonders' by Ramon Llull to turn back time and set up the museum courtyard the way it looked during the Middle Ages when it was a garden full of flowers and fruit trees. Meanwhile, at the Arxiu Històric (Historic Archives), the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia has transformed Eulàlia's tears into a shower of light.