Sant Sebastià: Palma’s January fiesta

Who Sant Sebastià is, and why Palma celebrates

Sant Sebastià is Palma’s patron saint, and his feast day is 20 January. The link goes back to 1523, when the city was hit by plague. According to tradition, a ship arrived carrying a relic of the saint, the plague ended, and the city gave him the credit. A confraternity was founded in thanks, and in 1634 he was declared co-patron of Palma.

For a long time the day was marked with little more than a Mass. The modern fiesta took shape after the return of democracy, when the city council began to organise concerts in the 1980s, partly to bring life to the city in the quietest month of the year. Today it runs for a couple of weeks in January and is Palma’s biggest winter celebration.

The revetla: the night of 19 January

The main night is the revetla, the eve of the feast. The council lights a large bonfire in Plaça Major, and stages go up in several squares in the centre, usually including Plaça d’Espanya, Plaça de Cort, Plaça Major and Plaça Joan Carles I, with a different kind of music in each. The concerts are free.

The other half of the night is food. Across the old town and the barris, neighbours light foguerons, small bonfires, and turn them into torrades, grills for sausages such as botifarró and llonganissa, pork and bread. It is noisy, smoky and sociable, and people stay out late. In 2025 the organisers of neighbourhood bonfires and barbecues could ask for permission to keep going until 2am.

Revetla

The eve of a feast day, and the party held on it.

Fogueró

A bonfire lit in a street or square for a fiesta.

Torrada

A grill, and the gathering around it.

Correfoc

A fire run: devils and dragons spraying sparks from fireworks through the streets.

Devils, a dragon and the rest of the programme

The council programme spreads over two weekends or more. It usually opens with the awakening of the Drac de na Coca, the city’s dragon, and closes with a correfoc in which troupes of dimonis, devils, run through the crowd with fireworks. In 2025 there was also a gathering of giants, the large carnival figures that towns across the island keep, and kite flying in the Parc de la Mar below the Cathedral.

On the feast day itself things are calmer. There is a Mass at the Cathedral, the city’s annual Premis Ciutat de Palma awards, and the Diada Ciclista, a bike ride from Plaça de Cort to Son Moix that has been held since 1982. Alongside the official events, neighbourhood groups and a growing number of informal confraternities run their own parties, music and bar crawls in the days before.

Is it a holiday?

Usually, but check. Each town hall picks two local holidays a year, and 20 January is normally one of Palma’s. The council can choose differently: in 2024, when the 20th fell on a Saturday, it picked other dates. When it is a holiday, schools, banks and public offices in Palma close. Other towns on the island keep their own calendars.

Living in the centre during the fiesta

If you buy in the old town, in La Lonja and the Born, around Plaça Major in the northern old town or near Plaça de Cort in Cathedral and Calatrava, Sant Sebastià happens on your doorstep. Most residents enjoy it. It helps to know what to expect.

• Music from the stages until well after midnight on the 19th, and crowds in the squares and the streets between them.
• Smoke from bonfires and grills drifting into open windows and onto washing.
• Streets closed to traffic and EMT and TIB buses diverted on the busiest days, even where residents normally have access.
• Fireworks and loud bangs during the correfocs. Keep pets indoors, and watch from a distance with children.
• A short, intense period: most of it happens over a few evenings and weekends, and normal life carries on in between.

If you are thinking of a flat in the old town, a visit in mid-January is one of the best ways to judge a street. You will hear the noise at its worst, and you will also see how much the neighbourhood comes together. A few days earlier, on 16 and 17 January, many villages celebrate Sant Antoni with their own bonfires and devils, so the whole island has a festive fortnight in the middle of winter.

Areas in this post

Palma · La Lonja & Born