Unique Beauty of Spain: Valencia

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of Santiago Calatrava’s futuristic City of Arts and Sciences complex, the opening of which did almost as much for Valencia as the Guggenheim did for Bilbao: putting the city on the map, raising its cultural profile and attracting foreign and domestic visitors. The colossal site includes a planetarium, Europe’s largest aquarium and an avant garde opera house.

The 125th anniversary of the birth of one of Spain’s greatest artists, Joan Miró, will be celebrated at an exhibition (15 Feb-17 June) at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, which will bring together more than 100 of his works and the city’s newest arts hub, Bombas Gens, will add an open-air sculpture exhibition in its gardens. Valencia’s Fallas firework festival (15-19 March in 2018) was added to Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list last year and there is now a Fallas tour that involves local artists and visits the Fallas Museum.