Portugal’s oldest music festival, Vilar de Mouros, in Caminha, kicks off today with Limp Bizkit and Xutos & Pontapés, and runs until Saturday with a line-up that includes The Prodigy, James and Ornatos Violeta.
This year, the festival will take place over four days instead of the usual three, and the organizers hope to add 10,000 more people to the 60,000 who attended last year.
The venue, “a music sanctuary by the river Coura”, is the same size as the previous edition, with “reinforced catering facilities, toilets and bars”, according to Diogo Marques, from the organization, speaking to Lusa at the beginning of the week.
Today’s line-up includes Limp Bizkit, Xutos & Pontapés, Enter Shikari, The Last Internationale and Micomaníacos.
On Thursday, The Prodigy, Millecolin, The Bloody Beetroots, in DJ set format, and Nowhere to be Found will perform.
Pendulum, Within Temptation, Apocalyptica and Bizarra Locomotiva are scheduled to perform on Friday.
This year’s Vilar de Mouros closes on Saturday with James, Ornatos Violeta, Guano Apes and Peaches.
According to Diogo Marques, one of this year’s novelties is the “involvement of sponsors in entertainment activities for festival-goers, such as the historic stage, which has hosted names like U2 or Elton John, among many others, and which will guarantee entertainment before and after the concerts”.
There will also be initiatives on the river, canoeing workshops, dances on the river beach and a supermarket on the campsite.
The campsite, with capacity for 4,000 tents and a glamping area with more than 100 tents, has been open since Sunday.
Organized by Surprise & Expectation, this year the festival will have Crédito Agrícola as its naming sponsor and Caminha Town Council and Vilar de Mouros Parish Council as partners.
The country’s first music festival, which even today enjoys the reputation of a ‘Portuguese Woodstock’, took place in 1971 in Vilar de Mouros, having suffered an eight-year hiatus between 2006 and 2014.
The first edition, in 1971, launched by doctor António Barge, was attended, among others, by Elton John and Manfred Mann.