EUROPALIA, the festival that produces a multifaceted artistic programme every two years around a particular country or theme, celebrates its 30th edition this autumn with a large-scale Spanish biennial. Exactly forty years after a first edition in 1985, EUROPALIA ESPAÑA will unfold a multidisciplinary programme from 8 October 2025 to 1 February 2026, uniting heritage and contemporary art forms and providing fascinating perspectives on themes that connect and challenge us.

With Francisco de Goya as its main focus and inspiration, this festival highlights the cultural richness of Spain through visual arts, architecture, theatre, dance, music, performance, film, and literature, featuring both renowned names and lesser-known figures alike. The artistic teams from both countries have consciously chosen to select artists from different generations and not only from major cities like Madrid and Barcelona but also from different regions of Spain.

Exactly 40 years after the first time EUROPALIA was dedicated to Spain, the question of how to re-present EUROPALIA ESPAÑA today has posed a challenge. It prompted EUROPALIA to focus on the changes that Spanish society has experienced since the beginning of democracy and its incorporation into the European Union in 1986, as well as to explore artistic creation over the last four decades.

GOYA: A CENTRAL FIGURE

The festival kicks off with the main exhibition Luz y sombra: Goya and Spanish realism at Bozar (Brussels), running from 8 October 2025, to 11 January 2026. This exhibition is built around one of the grandmasters of Spanish art, whose modern sensibility is more topical today than ever.
Goya (1746–1828) is known for his impressive portraits and colourful folk scenes. His œuvre is at the same time characterized by socially critical imagery, including indictments against war and the general abuses of his time.

Curated by Rocío Gracia and Leticia Sastre, along with scientific committee members José de la Mano, Anna Reuter, and Rocío Robles, the exhibition invites reflection on Goya’s work from a contemporary perspective. Goya and the ‘Goyaesque’, with all the connotations of light and shade, have become established in the Western imaginary since the 19th century as models, stereotypes of the authentically Spanish. Far from rejecting them, this exhibition uses these clichés as a springboard, trying to identify the shape and references of some of their basic patterns as a way of understanding ‘Spanishness’.

Goya lived in a time of crisis, transformation, and paradigm shifts, with all the insecurities and possibilities that this generates—perhaps a time similar to our own. He captured the present, reflecting his time, and created a mirror in which we continue to see ourselves, even if our times are different. His contribution to constructing the Spanish collective imagination is undeniable, both within Spain and beyond, not from an idealized or idealizing perspective but rather from a critical and visionary attitude.

The exhibition brings together Goya’s paintings, drawings, and engravings with works by his contemporaries and by artists of later generations (José Gutiérrez Solana, Pablo Picasso, Antonio Saura amongst others). In addition, new multidisciplinary creations, such as those by visual artist Asunción Molinos Gordo, sound artist Francisco Lopez, by filmmaker Albert Serra and by contemporary Spanish and Belgian writers, help to demonstrate the relevance of
Goya’s œuvre today. The ensemble of approximately 200 works explores Goya’s legacy and its significance in the image of Spain.

From 8 October 2025 until 11 January 2026 at Bozar, Brussels

Luz y Sombra. Goya and Spanish Realism: exhibition calatogue
Authors: Anna Reuter, José de la Mano, Leticia Sastre Sánchez, Rocío Robles Tardío, Rocío Gracia Ipiña
Published by Pelckmans
Graphic design by Sara De Bondt
280 p., Ed. 4,000 copies. ENGLISH (Spanish insert TBC) Hardcover, 25,000 words / 200 images (not counting institutional texts, bio of Goya, bibliography and colophon. Not counting captions/text notes).

MAIN THEMES: CAPRICHOS, DISPARATES AND DESASTRES DE LA GUERRA

Caprichos, Disparates and Desastres de la Guerra (Quirks, Madnesses, Disasters of War) are titles to three engravings series and three terms that imbue Goya’s critical and visionary spirit, all of which have inspired the EUROPALIA ESPAÑA programme as a whole and allowed it to connect the past with the present, and the local with the global. The series are sources of inspiration from which to view the present and explore contemporary themes. How would Goya’s Caprichos, Desastres de la Guerra, or Disparates manifest today? What are our caprichos, our disasters, our absurdities? Here, the ‘our’ seeks to transcend identity, just as Goya did, in order to speak to the broadest possible community. This results in underlying themes that are certainly alive today in Spain, but which, from a broader perspective, concern us all: (Re)presentation; Connectedness, Democracy and Water.

CAPRICHOS represent inspiration, originality and creative freedom. In Goya’s work, the Caprichos reflect a free attitude towards social and cultural conventions. In the contemporary context, this term can be related to consumerism, the culture of excess and the cult of the image. The subtheme of (Re)presentation explores how images and identities are created and perceived, focusing on social networks and the construction of ideals.

The exhibition Resolución. On lifetime decisions in Spanish cinema at MoMu (Antwerp) examines Spanish cinema and depicts how women are portrayed during pivotal moments in their lives, such as departures, separations, and murders. Cristina Garrido’s The White Cube is Never Empty at MACS (Hornu) engages with visual representation and photographic reproduction of visual arts.

In their solo The Making of a Lethargy (Monty, Dans in Brugge, Antwerp), young performer Héctor Espuela Pablo deconstructs the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty from a trans, non-binary perspective. Alberto Cortés challenges capitalist, patriarchal, and normative narratives in his solo performance One Night at the Golden Bar (Théâtre des Tanneurs, Brussels and CAMPO, Ghent), questioning how we define and experience love in a world that shapes and undermines our romantic ideals. Candela Capitan denounces the male gaze and plays with challenging female poses as in her performance Solas (DE SINGEL, Antwerp). In Dirty, Juan Domínguez has participants work with clay, critiquing the hierarchy of the visual and emphasizing the political potential of touch and sound.

At the Musée Royal de Mariemont, the heritage exhibition Mary of Hungary. Art & Power in the Renaissance shows how Charles V and in particular his sister Mary of Hungary understood that the key of power lay in the art of representation, in order to secure a fragile dominance in Europe for Charles V’s successor Philips II. From her palace in Binche and her hunting estate in Mariemont, Mary developed a propaganda programme, carving out a unique place for herself in a world then reserved exclusively for men. At the Snijders & Rockoxhuis in Antwerp, visual artist Santiago Ydañez starts up a dialogue with the museum’s collection and recreates, copies, re-presents the images in overwhelming paintings and installations.

DISPARATES: in this series of engravings Goya describes absurd, grotesque, surreal or irrational situations linked to social criticism through hyperbole, humor and satire. It will allow us to address issues such as the between the real and the absurd, and questions such as economic inequality or gender and LGBTIQ+ concerns. In the face of a consumerist and individualistic way of life, we want to reclaim the bonds, the connectedness, that unite us as a way of confronting the challenges ahead.

Southern European and Mediterranean societies are perceived from the outside as societies in which family, interpersonal, intergenerational, and intracommunity bonds are very strong. Many artists and artistic practices, including traditional and collective ones, focus on creating, nurturing, and enhancing bonds or questioning them, reflecting on the volution, needs, and transformations of societies.

In Rituales during All Saints’ Week, traditions connecting us with our deceased loved ones merge, featuring the duo of singers Tarta Relena with Sara García Fernandez developing a ritual with bread (at cemeteries in Leuven, Ostend, and in Four à Chaux in Tournai). Cuerpos Celestes (heavenly bodies) by the theatre company El Conde de Torrefiel is an audio-guided tour of the Zuiderbegraafplaats cemetery in Ghent, conceived as a hidden city inhabited by silent residents.

Spaniards from different generations and backgrounds also come together for rituals, celebrations, traditions that are based on social, religious, culinary peculiarities, like the Fallas in Valencia and Semana Santa in various cities. Throughout Spain, dance, song, and music also serve to connect people, with flamenco being a prominent example in a number of provinces.
Curator and artist Pedro G. Romero will develop a flamenco focus from November 24 to 30 at Bozar, KVS, the Constantin Meuniermuseum and other venues. At the Concertgebouw in Bruges, Marcos Morau choreographs the Ballet Nacional de España in Afanador: an overwhelming, performance with thirty seven dancers, inspired by flamenco and more broader by Andalusian folklore. Yinka Esi Graves intertwines flamenco with other forms of bodily expression in The Disappearing Act, presenting a contemporary perspective from the African diaspora. She will perform at the Théâtre Royal de Namur and at Dans in Brugge.

In the new creation Chapters of Celebrations by Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Wouter Deltour, and B’Rock Orchestra and Muziektheater Transparant (in co-production with DE SINGEL, Antwerp, also performed at Palais des Beaux-Arts Charleroi and Wintercircus, Ghent), the music from the 17th-century La Folia transitions into rave rhythms, combining Spanish and Belgian choreographies that embody collective ecstasy, the power of music and dance, and the connectedness of queer communities.
The window drawings and workshop The Day I Left Home at Muntpunt (Brussels) by Jesús Cisneros will be focused on the role of the library in welcoming newcomers within the community. The many forms of writings it holds, all the diverse works, invite us to connect with different cultures while also representing a space of resistance and repair.

DESASTRES: Goya’s Disasters depict the horrors of war and violence. Today, more than ever, there is a need to celebrate Democracy in a world where it is under great pressure. In the last 50 years, since the beginning of the democratic transition in Spain, many artists have looked back to try and understand recent history, have actively engaged in the struggle for the establishment or consolidation of democracy, or have outlined their dreams of a more just and free future.

The theatre piece 1936 at KVS (Brussels) examines one of the most critical events in Spanish history, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), which marked the beginning of the Franco regime. The exhibition Villages of Colonization at the Spanish Embassy focuses on the villages built by Franco to populate and exploit rural Spain. Plans, models, film material, and interviews with current inhabitants illustrate the evolution of a landscape and scrutinize the handling of the dictatorship’s legacies. At the S.M.A.K. in Ghent, the group exhibition Resistance reflects on the power of images to infiltrate, denounce and collectivize ideas in the struggle for contemporary democratic values.

Composer, pianist and percussionist Aitor Etxebarria brings his composition Gernika 85, referring to the bombing of his native Gernika to the Museum of Fine Arts (Antwerp), where the late night Thursdays of December will be devoted to EUROPALIA ESPAÑA.

The film series Dreams of the Future at the Cinematek in Brussels includes two blocks: Eager for a future (1975–1981), showing films and documentaries that narrate the time of the Spanish transition; and Dreamed Futures (2010–2025), with works that address the tensions of contemporary society, between the uncertainty provoked by the global crisis and the need to recover dreams of the future.

In today’s world, disaster can also refer to a whole series of global crises: political instability, environmental collapse, social and armed conflicts and decolonial struggles. The programme will pay special attention to the theme of Water. As a crucial element in Spain’s history. Artists and authors start from the theme in order to address its beauty and topical issues such as climate change, migration and tourism: issues that are on the agenda not only in Spain but also worldwide.

Dragon, Rest Your Head on the Seabed is a composition for six synchronized swimmers in a swimming-pool, developed by Pablo Lilienfield and Federico Vladimir merging dance, sports, hydro-feminism and speculative fiction. A tale featuring a dismembered and gendered self: a transindividual self that is dismembered and joined together through liquid and formed by the multiple subjectivity of the six swimmers (Wezemberg Swimming pool, Antwerp).

Maider López will develop a collective performance around the Zenne River in Brussels, which has significant historical importance to the capital but is now hidden beneath streets and squares.

As the title suggests, Fires by Ça Marche centers around the opposite of water: fire. This immersive installation-performance in Ghent’s Astridpark (in collaboration with CAMPO) addresses not only the destructive power of fire but also our primal relationship with an element that has shaped both our evolution and our imagination.