This week the Raimat Arts Festival (RAF) is celebrated in Lleida, an ambitious proposal that combines art, music, heritage and local gastronomy as tools for social, cultural and economic transformation in the region. Elena de Carandini, sixteenth generation of the Codorníu Vinícola Family and member of the Board of Trustees of the Raimat-Lleida Community Foundation, is the main fencer of this meeting that goes for its fourth edition and that this year has artists such as singer Alba Carmona or violinist Allinor D’elon. In this interview, he explains why a festival that gives visibility to local producers and that will allocate their income to create an artist residence and an irrigation school.
Where does the idea of incorporating art to the development of the Raimat community?
It is a very personal project that is born from the vision of my great grandfather, by Manuel Raventós, who more than 100 years ago transformed a desert into Raimat into an oasis of vineyards. For me it is an inspiring project, of transformation, of enhancing a territory, a community. He did it with the tools he had in 1914, because he was a farmer and a viticulture expert who planted a million trees and built a town. I love music and I believe a lot in art as enriching the soul of people, of the community and more in a town like Raimat, of 506 inhabitants, a rural area of Spain, as there are so many.
How does the participation of society in Raimat projects arise?
In January 2020, before the pandemic, I bought Raimat Castle because I wanted to make a tourism, impact project in the community, and when in March they locked us, I thought: What tourism will I do? Nothing.
As I have always been in the foundations sector and I had already been in the Palau de la Música de Barcelona, I dedicated myself to training in how to create a community foundation, because in Spain there are very little, only nine. Now, the Raimat Lleida Community Foundation (FCRL) supports young farmers with tractorist courses or at the Agrarian School and from the festival we provide residences for artists from 2026.
The environmental concern is present at the festival …
The RAF is the first “postive” festival in the world, since it returns to nature twice the water it consumes. If we consume half a million liters of water we return a million liters of water through water efficiency projects and what we have done this year, in this fourth edition, is to save with a software system in the irrigation of the vineyards. There are people who say: “Well, I compensate for the carbon footprint planting trees” and it is fantastic, but you can go further, you can regenerate and your event is positive for nature.
Is this initiative to combine art with agricultural communities can be replicated in other places?
From Raimat, a small village, I think you can inspire other territories. I always explain to other community foundations, as I did with a group of the Eastern Rioja, that if you have a spectacular heritage, an impressive gastronomy, which I believe exist in any rural area of Spain. Of course, it can be replicated and so you call a tourism respectful of the community.
The festival reached its fourth edition and we see that its international impact increases …
One of the first projects of the Foundation was the Festival. We think, how can we enrich the soul of who lives here? Then we decided to invite others to discover the territory through art or gastronomy and this is closely linked to tourism with an impact that I wanted to make. We do not attract visitors without more, but each person who comes to Raimat has to leave something good in the community. I think that through the festival and the castle we convert Raimat to a meeting point for conscious travelers who are looking for more than entertainment. At the international level, this is reinforced by the RAF Brotherhood with the Napa Valley Festival in California.