Monar’T Festival: Creating A Live Museum In The Streets Of Girona

At the beginning of 2026, I took the train to Girona to visit a dear friend. Just a short ride from the French border, the city is charming and full of surprises. During my stay, I had the chance to do a guided tour and discover the Monar’T Festival and its street art wonders.

Art, Culture, Community And Territory: Welcome To Monar’T

After the tour, I did some research to know more about the street art I had seen.

So, Monar’T is an annual mural and urban art festival held in the neighborhoods of Santa Eugènia de Ter and Can Gibert del Pla in Girona, with a social and multicultural focus.

It was created in 2019 as a community initiative to put a quality cultural event on the city’s map. One of the main goals was (and still is) to celebrate the remarkable diversity of these neighborhoods where residents come from 79 different nationalities. The festival was also created to beautify deteriorated walls and public spaces and give a platform to local, national and international artists.

The project is driven by a collective of residents, artists, neighborhood associations, cultural entities and social services. And it is organized through the PEIC (Education and Coexistence Plan) and the Santa Eugènia Civic Center.

A Week Of Art, Exchange And Celebration

The festival happens every year during the last week of September. If you’re interested in going, the next edition will be running from 21 to 27 September 2026.

What To Expect During The Monar’T Festival

Throughout the week, the festival offers a rich program of activities for all ages, including family workshops, spray and graffiti sessions, performing arts, guided tours of the mural itinerary, an art exhibition and an art market, as well as concerts and demonstrations of hip hop, break dance and world music.

During the event, Monar’T brings together a carefully balanced selection of artists, split equally between local, regional, national, international and social project representatives.

A Week Of Living Together

It’s an art project, but also an exchange program: the hosted artists spend the week living at Can Cocollona, immersing themselves in the daily life of the Santa Eugènia de Ter and Can Gibert del Pla neighborhoods, getting to know residents and the local associative fabric before intervening in public and private spaces chosen by the community itself. The artists are welcomed and fed by local neighborhood entities, with meals reflecting the multicultural richness of the area.

The week then culminates in a grand Festival of Cultures and Diversity, bringing together traditional dances, music, storytelling and games, as well as a gastronomic and cultural fair. The celebration closes with a musical vermouth featuring poetry recitals in multiple languages and performances by singer-songwriters from across the globe.

What If You Can’t Attend The Monar’T Festival?

Good news: you don’t need to time your visit around the festival to enjoy the street art. The neighborhoods are open all year long, and you can explore them at your own pace. You can also book a guided tour through the association, or simply use the maps available in the Itineraries section of the festival’s website to find the murals on your own.

I got lucky: my friend in Girona happened to know one of the guides, so we got a private tour, and it was absolutely fantastic. There is so much art to discover that you could easily spend a full day just wandering around. It really does feel like an open-air museum.

That said, I’d recommend going with a guide if you can. Every piece has its own story, its own layers of meaning. The murals touch on diversity, the beauty of different cultures, women’s rights, and environmental activism.

Art That Makes You Feel Something

One of the street art pieces that really struck me was a painting of a vulva surrounded by flowers. It sounds bold, and it is, but it’s also genuinely beautiful. There’s something powerful about it too: we’re so used to seeing male genitalia scrawled on walls everywhere, but the female body is rarely celebrated that way. This piece carried a message about protecting women from rape and abuse, and it landed.

Another mural that stopped me in my tracks was a giant portrait of Berta Cáceres, the Honduran environmental and indigenous rights activist who was assassinated in 2016. The scale of it, and the weight of her story, made it impossible to walk past without feeling something.

Some of these works genuinely moved me. They spoke to things I care deeply about, and at a moment when I had been feeling a little out of place in the world, standing in front of those walls made me feel seen. One piece in particular hit close to home: it was about self-esteem, inner beauty, and the freedom to simply be yourself.

Girona may be a small city, but it has a lot to offer. From the street art of Santa Eugènia to the ancient streets and monuments of the old town, it is definitely worth the trip. And nearby, there is Figueres and Dali’s museum.