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So I just recently got back from an eleven-day holiday in Spain and during this time had a good old knees up at Benicassim, supposedly the “Best Festival in Europe”. Although I had a fabulous time, I did fail to get fully engulfed in the festival fever.
I have been to quite a wide variety of festivals, all of which have been in the UK. I’ve been to the big ones; Reading and Glastonbury and smaller ones like Womad and Freeze festival. So I decided to do one somewhere else in Europe.
Benicassim is the perfect mix between a festival and a holiday, you’ve got the option of camping, but hostels are very reasonable so you can stay in comfort and not have to pack your own paper hand towels. There is obviously the added extra of the festival being situated a twenty minute walk to the beach and the town is littered with swimming pools, that also have bars and cafes.
However with all these off site pros there are unfortunately a few on site cons. The festival itself fails to provide people with the community feeling that normally appears in campsites. There was little intermingling between groups of people; quite a lot of the other festival goers were either quite aggressive or very unresponsive. You may think this is because the festival is in Spain and the group I went with were from England, however the majority of the festival goers were from the UK or Australia.
The sound at the festival was also quite poor quality. Festivals in the UK do battle quite a lot in terms of sound, especially when it is windy. However when the weather conditions are perfect and the system is working properly you KNOW you’re at a festival. You wake up ears ringing/ bleeding from the night before with a lovely glow that only a festival goer can exude. However this did not appear at Benicassim, unless you were front central the sound and atmosphere was terrible.
Although the festival was enjoyable, it felt like a UK festival on foreign turf without all the fabulous things about British festivals. Sorry Benicassim but I feel you fail to be the “Best festival in Europe”.
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