Things have been a bit qui­et at Gourmet Gigs while I’ve been vis­it­ing south­ern Spain. But as chance would have it, we were invit­ed to a local music fes­ti­val called Deltirón in the breezy, friend­ly coastal city of Cádiz. I swapped a life­time of damp fes­ti­vals on home turf for one with palm trees, envi­ably balmy weath­er and Estrel­la lager flow­ing till the late hours – I could get used to this. 

Deltirón is a one-day event which takes place at Balu­arte de la Can­de­lar­ia, a 17th cen­tu­ry fortress built along the sea wall, now an open-air cul­tur­al cen­tre. It’s a quirky and atmos­pher­ic place, jux­ta­pos­ing beau­ty with the mere­ly ser­vice­able, prob­a­bly due to its recent incar­na­tion as an army barracks.

There’s space for one stage with a bar, while a shel­tered area hosts the food stall, a sec­ond bar and a busy merch stall. Once you’ve got your wrist stamp you can wan­der in and out of the site – between acts we sat and watched boats chug­ging into har­bour, while groups of elder­ly men patient­ly cast their fish­ing lines into the port waters. 

Deltirón fea­tured main­ly local bands with­out show­cas­ing any par­tic­u­lar genre, instead it’s a wel­come mix. The after­noon start­ed with Fes­tykids for fam­i­lies with chil­dren. We arrived just in time to catch a cou­ple of num­bers by ener­getic young post-punk band Minor­i­ty of One.

As dusk gath­ered, Atavis­mo played a pow­er­ful set, a moody com­bi­na­tion of prog and psy­che­delia, heavy riffs anchor­ing down the mate­r­i­al. The band inject a par­tic­u­lar­ly Span­ish feel into their com­po­si­tions, which gave it a sen­su­ous flu­id­i­ty. The crowd stood trans­fixed as the band ramped up the long and dra­mat­ic finale to their set. 

The Elec­tric Alley are home-grown tal­ent with an exten­sive local fan base, judg­ing by the amount of band T shirt wear­ers we saw saun­ter­ing around the city. Theirs is a no-holds-barred rock set – influ­ences are cred­it­ed as Led Zep­pelin and Guns and Ros­es – and the pow­er­ful and expres­sive voice of front man and gui­tarist Jaime Moreno and the band’s dis­tinc­tive riffs make Elec­tric Alley a notable force. 

By this point the crowd were well up for danc­ing; for­tu­nate­ly the next act, The Aga­por­nis, a nine-piece act, played dance­able funk, with a cap­ti­vat­ing brass sec­tion and female singer.

The fes­ti­val was a great intro­duc­tion to a swathe of tal­ent­ed local musi­cians; in addi­tion we ate deli­cious piz­za from the over­worked food traders and nat­u­ral­ly an Estrel­la beer or two – all that was left was to join the fren­zy at the merch stall. Deltirón a great lit­tle fes­ti­val – laid back and friendly.

Deltirón fes­ti­val, Cádiz

Jaime Moreno, Atavis­mo, shot on poor qual­i­ty iPhone