Por Redaccion The XIV Traditional Pottery Fair ‘Villa de Avilés’ brings together 14 workshops from all over Spain to celebrate the El Bollo festivities.
On April 18, 2025
Fourteen workshops from six very different communities such as Andalusia, Aragon, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, and Galicia, come together at the XIV Traditional Pottery Fair ‘Villa de Avilés’ (FATVA), as part of the El Bollo festivities. It will take place on April 19 and 20 at Plaza Domingo Álvarez Acebal, from 12:00 to 21:00 on Saturday and from 10:00 to 21:00 on Sunday.
The inauguration will be attended by the mayor of Avilés, Mariví Monteserín, accompanied by the Councilor for Festivities, Yolanda Alonso, and the commissioner of Saint Augustine (Florida), Cynthia Garris.
With workshops in Badajoz, Cáceres, Huesca, Zamora, Ourense, A Coruña, Salamanca, Jaén, Córdoba, León, and Toledo, attendees can acquire and admire a variety of vessels with surprising uses and morphologies that are representative of each place of origin.
The Traditional Pottery Fair «Villa de Avilés» is the only one of its kind in Spain, where only traditional pieces that were an essential part of our ancestors’ daily lives, related to the life cycle of 20th-century society, are exhibited to the public as authentic «historical documents» that speak of lifestyles from times past.
In addition to the commercial aspect of these events, the Avilés fair primarily aims to promote and recognize the cultural heritage of a millennia-old craft. Therefore, FATVA values both the potters who still work on the primitive hand wheel or the later foot-operated Roman wheel, as well as the potteries that disappeared due to social changes and are now being recovered to expand the study of Spanish ethnography.
In this new edition of FATVA, the recovered pottery from Benabarre (Huesca) in Aragon will be featured, along with the unique pieces also recovered from Tioira (Ourense), adding to the dozen recovered potteries that have already participated in the Avilés FATVA project, a platform that supports and promotes this important recovery initiative, completing the history of Spanish popular craftsmanship and being a unique project of Avilés.
The public will be able to purchase a variety of decorative pieces at the different stands, as well as items for daily use such as pots and pans in multiple varieties for cooking delicious stews as in the past, where chickpeas or fabada, chicken or stewed meat, or the various pork dishes reach their maximum flavor and texture when cooked in clay pots.
Other pieces include chocolate pots for tasting this rich treat, practical tortilla turners, plates, and trays of all sizes, clay ovens for roasting, jugs for water, wine, or oil, water jugs to keep water cool, flower pots, salt and pepper shakers, and many other pieces typical of traditional pottery: all handcrafted with centuries-old techniques.
Once again, FATVA offers a visual spectacle thanks to the diversity of decorative finishes, ranging from the sobriety of earth tones to the vibrant polychrome of glazed ceramics, adorned with colorful and attractive ornamental motifs. All these pieces will be available to the public at very affordable prices.
List of Participants
- Alfarería Abad (Toledo)
- Alfarería Esteban (León)
- Alfarería Hernández (Salamanca)
- Alfonso Alcaide (Córdoba)
- Francisco Moreno (Toledo)
- Francisco Pascual (Zamora)
- Francisco Saavedra (Badajoz)
- Alfarería Benabarre (Huesca)
- Hrnos. Góngora (Jaén)
- José Antonio Añón (A Coruña)
- Juanjo Pajares (Cáceres)
- Mari Carmen Doval (Ourense)
- Pedro Rodríguez (Zamora)
- Alfarería Peño (Toledo)