'Benvinguts a Pagès' consolidates with a stable year-round offer and returns in person on 2 and 3 October

Benvinguts a Pagès returns in person in 2021. The celebration of Catalan farming will once again open the gates of Catalonia's agri-food farms on the first weekend of October. Members of the public will be able to travel out to the countryside and take part in an experience that reveals where our food comes from and lets them buy directly from producers, with no middlemen.

More than 150 farms, almost 200 rural accommodation providers and some 200 restaurants that work with local produce will make up the line-up of Benvinguts a Pagès La Festa on the weekend of 2 and 3 October in Catalonia. The pandemic prevented last year's farm open day, but this year the traditional format returns with every Catalan county taking part

The main new feature of this year's Benvinguts a Pagès will be that the free visits must be booked in advance through the website benvingutsapages.cat, which becomes the hub and information point for the whole project. "Farmers are responding with enthusiasm and excitement; they are keen to open their doors and tell the public about their daily lives", explained Ramon Sentmartí, managing director of Prodeca.

Day or weekend routes

On the first weekend of October the day and weekend routes continue, including free farm visits, stays at each area's accommodation and restaurants, and the chance to rediscover each place's heritage and history. Benvinguts a Pagès includes the Costa Brava, Paisatges de Barcelona, Costa Barcelona, Costa Daurada, Terres de l'Ebre, Terres de Lleida and Pyrenees routes.

'Benvinguts a Pagès Tot l'Any'

Alongside the new edition of Benvinguts a Pagès La Festa is growing and consolidating a project that launches a new strand this year with the addition of Benvinguts a Pagès Tot l’Any, a stable offer with around  a hundred farms providing quality tourism experiences to encourage local sales and raise the profile of farming and local produce. "We are responding to a demand from the sector, which through these paid visits will be able to open a new line of business with top-quality experiences that in some cases include product tastings", said Sentmartí. Prodeca provided individual advice beforehand to the farms taking part in Benvinguts a Pagès Tot l'Any, all of which hold the Local Sales Label, to help them shape these visits, which aim to make the sector more professional.

The public has a wide range of distinctive, exclusive tourism activities to choose from: for example, spending a day as a saffron grower on a farm in Pallars Jussà, visiting a honey producer in Baix Camp and discovering the world of bees, or spending a whole day as a farmer on a holding in La Garrotxa, milking the cows, going into the henhouse and picking fruit.

The paid visits can already be booked through the website benvingutsapages.cat, which works as a booking centre and allows searching by product or by county, and all Covid-19 prevention and safety protocols apply. The project is open to all farms across the territory and keeps registration permanently open so that each producer can join in line with their product's seasonality.

Presentation of the project

The new features of the Benvinguts a Pagès project were presented on Monday 21 June at the Masiets & Perich farm in Rajadell, Bages, with the participation of Prodeca's managing director Ramon Sentmartí, the broadcaster and livestock farmer Peyu, and the farm's manager, Mònica Soler.

Peyu, taking part in Benvinguts a Pagès for the first time, stressed how important it is that "the public values the primary sector, becomes aware of where our food comes from, that the prestige is restored and that farming can be a career and a life project as valid as any other". The popular broadcaster and livestock farmer talked with the manager of Masiets & Perich, sharing farm work and their experiences. The farm, producing beef, organic chicken and oil, is driven by two young livestock farmers from Bages who decided two years ago to start a business in the primary sector. Mònica Soler said that during the Benvinguts a Pagès Tot l’Any  visits "we explain to the public what an extensive herd is, what our cows eat, where they sleep and, in short, our daily life on the farm, where we also raise  chickens and tend the olive trees". Soler explained that "our grandfather was a farmer, and two years ago we decided to set up and throw ourselves into this world, which is hard and demanding, but rewarding".

Across the five in-person editions of Benvinguts a Pagès held so far, more than 100,000 people have visited the almost 800 farms, 930 accommodation providers and more than 750 restaurants that have taken part in the initiative so far. Last year the project moved online for a weekend that generated more than 330,000 views on social media.