Verbena del Centenario

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25 - 27.10.2019

Friday October 25th,: 4 pm - midnight
Saturday October 26th: 11 am - 2 am
Sunday October 27th: 11 am - 3 pm

Glass Gallery and Former Operations Hall (Floor 1)

Free entry

The Palacio de Cibeles is 100 years old in 2019. Exhibitions, concerts and other activities have featured in a programme that has marked the building's anniversary throughout the year. During these months something we already knew has become quite clear: just how important this Palace is for the people of Madrid. That’s why the perfect finale to the celebrations has to be the most festive, joyful and popular event a city like ours can possibly imagine: a party, or as we say here in Spain, a verbena!

All of Madrid is invited to share three days of festivities that not only celebrate the Palace's birthday, but also allow us to project a playful and amusing look on what has been imagined, dreamt and achieved, but also on the possibility of the unimaginable in these hundred years in our city.

We will look back to recall the music, the gastronomy, the people, the culture, the activity of the Madrid that witnessed the birth of the building; but, as another way of embodying the promise of those years, we will look back from the present day. So, our verbena will be enhanced by a continuous soundtrack that will boast the fresh and uninhibited cuplé (music hall) songs of Glòria Ribera and Laura Inclán, revamped sounds from beyond the Atlantic, courtesy of Candeleros and Los Pirañas, the hybrid proposals that Nadah el Shazy and Idris Ackamoor bring to jazz and pop all the way from Africa, and the uninhibited and heterodox interpretation of classical music by Patricia Escudero & Luis Delgado or L'Ocelle Mare. “Charanga” bands and DJs will invite you to dance together.

The city’s gastronomic tradition is evocative; its aromas and flavours will fill the spaces of the Glass Gallery thanks to the Asociación de Restaurantes y Tabernas Centenrios de Madrid and Mahou.

Similarly, there is an identity associated with the nooks and crannies of Madrid and with its people, as the illustrations by Álvaro Bernís, Begoña García-Alen, Elena Éper, Javier Lozano, Joaquín Secall, Luis Pérez Calvo, Luis Yang, María Melero and Roberta Vázquez will show us.

And we also speak of memory when we look back on the first artistic avant-garde that illuminated Madrid and that will be expressed in our verbena through colour in an invitation to the imagination that will also permeate a good number of activities open to all audiences. It will be that imagination and all the excitement that will make us spin round on the merry-go-round, zoom around in dodgem cars, fly high in an airship, wave from the centre of a circus ring or be the star of our own film.

The programme of activities will soon be available.

  • Programme
  • In collaboration with