Cheste is a town in the Valencian community quite famous for its motor racing circuit. Indeed, the finale of the Moto GP series takes place there making it internationally reknowned. If bikes are not your thing though, there’s still a very good reason to visit – Graffiti! Since 2016 the Graffitea International Street Art Festival has been filling empty walls in the town with a magnificent display of open air art.
The town is really quite pleasant just to wander aimlessly around, but a little more direction for the murals would have been nice. The tourist information office is located on the ground floor of a rather curious building. Find it open (0900-1415 Monday to Saturday), and they will give you a series of leaflets for each year. The 2020 leaflet has the most useful map showing you where the artwork was created in all of the previous years. The 2021 information is only available online at the moment and I didn’t find the map nearly as easy to navigate.
There is so much cool graffiti in this collection of murals that we didn’t manage to see it all! Here’s a selection of our favourites:
The one that got away though, so to speak, was an amazing picture called “Motoratones” or “Motor Mice” in English. Follow the link to find out more about this impressive painting. Navigating the website to find such information is not as easy as it could be, so good luck! We might just have to go back to find this one as it’s fabulous.
The 2021 edition of the festival also resulted in a YouTube video showing some of the works in progress. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a worthwhile trip if you are in the Valencia area. We look forward to seeing what future creations are made.
