Page 71 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2014

Robert Cray, Keb Mo, Johnny Winter and many more have offer something different to the young people of the town. In the
played in the historic Cazorla Bullring, a venue which seats third and fourth years, the potential as a draw to tourists became
5,000 people. The festival has expanded over the years to apparent and what was more apparent was that Cazorla was the
include four stages throughout three days of constant blues music perfect place for such a festival.
played by over 30 bands. Find more information online at
The music starts at noon in the old village square called Plaza www.cazorla.es/bluescazorla06.
Santa Maria and finishes in the Cazorla Bullring at 5am in the
morning. Fans particularly enjoy walking around the town from
café to café, enjoying delicious tapas while listening to the best
blues bands from all around the world. Cazorla will celebrate its
20th anniversary in 2014 during July 24-25-26.
Before being associated with the best blues music, Cazorla
has always been known for the natural park which bears its
name, the Sierra de Cazorla. The park is the largest in Spain and
second largest in Europe with an area of 550,000 acres. Due to
this, Cazorla has always been a popular destination for tourists,
and along with the production of olive oil, tourism is an equally
important economic activity for the town and the region.
BluesCazorla has proven to be a very effective way to not
only fill all the hotels, rural houses, camp sites and apartments
in the area during the festival, but it has also been extremely
effective at promoting the town. This was not part of the initial
plan when a group of friends got together in the summer of 1994
and just wanted to program one night of something different from Watermelon Slim plays on the main stage in the Cazorla Bullring
pop or mainstream music. In that first year, the idea was just to Photo by Pedro Palomares

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