Quartell holds its Música a la Fresca festival with African drums, folk and jazz
Quartell, a Camp de Morvedre municipality next to Sagunto, hosts four free concerts from 31 July to 6 August for the ninth Música a la Fresca festival, with African percussion, Latin American folk and jazz.
Just a few minutes from Sagunto, the small municipality of Quartell (population 1,810, according to 2025 records) once again turns its streets into a music stage every August. The ninth edition of Música a la Fresca, run by Quartell's town council, offers four free concerts between 31 July and 6 August, mixing African percussion, Latin American folk, singer-songwriter music and jazz.
The line-up opens on Friday 31 July in the church square with the group Luna de África. It continues on 4 August at the municipal swimming pool with Latin American folk artist Carmen Manila, moves on 5 August to the Molí Nou area with singer-songwriter Laia Pizà, and closes on 6 August in Plaza del Mestre Sebastián Langa, where jazz musician Chema Peñalver pays tribute to swing legend Benny Goodman.
Festival director Josep Gumbau says the variety of venues and styles is the event's trademark, and this year adds a festival bar and new participatory activities. Culture councillor Pepe Sebastián notes the festival helps make Quartell a more intercultural village. Although Quartell runs its own festive calendar, the town shares the Camp de Morvedre district's summer cultural map with Sagunto.
Música a la Fresca thus joins the wider map of summer festivals dotted across Camp de Morvedre, a district where every municipality carves out its own nights of open-air music while Sagunto runs its own parallel summer programme, including events like Sagunt a Escena at the Roman Theatre. The two towns' proximity means much of the audience filling Quartell's squares also comes from Sagunto and other neighbouring municipalities, reinforcing the district-wide character of a line-up that mixes different styles and audiences every year under the same free, open-air format.
The focus on stylistic variety — from African percussion to classic jazz, by way of Latin American folk — also showcases the cultural programming of Camp de Morvedre's smaller towns, which aim to stand apart from Sagunto's bigger events without giving up on artistic quality. For Quartell's town council, keeping this event running for nine consecutive editions confirms that free, itinerant concerts staged across different spots in the village work as a driver of social cohesion during the summer.
According to El Periódico de Aquí, with demographic data from Wikipedia.