Certamen Internacional Andrés Segovia

Repertoire requirements

Check website for requirements

• Preliminary Round · 15-20 min
  • Free choice program
• Semi-Final · 20-25 min
  • Free choice program
• Final · 30 min
  • Free choice recital

Official website

https://certamenandressegovia.com/

Visiting? A guitarist's guide to La Herradura

Photo: kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

On the Costa Tropical, where Andrés Segovia was made an adopted son, the Certamen Internacional Andrés Segovia has honoured the father of the modern classical guitar since the mid-1980s. Held each November in the seaside village of La Herradura, near Almuñécar in Granada province, it is one of the longest-running guitar competitions in the world, and it sits within an hour of Granada, the Alhambra city that is, as much as anywhere on earth, the guitar's spiritual home. A warm, low-key place to hear the instrument, in other words, with a great deal of history at its back.

Getting there

This stretch of coast has no railway, so you fly in and continue by bus or car. La Herradura sits almost exactly between the two Andalusian airports, Málaga (AGP), the far bigger of them, and Granada's smaller GRX, roughly an hour's drive from either, the road threading between the mountains and the Mediterranean the whole way. A car is worth having here, both for the coves along the coast and for the run up to Granada.

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Where to stay

La Herradura is a small, unhurried beach village curled around a horseshoe bay, which is what its name means, easy to settle into for the competition days, on a coast of quiet coves and some 320 days of sun a year. Stay near the seafront and everything is walkable; slightly larger Almuñécar, with its Phoenician and Roman remains, is a few kilometres east if you want a bigger base.

What you'll hear

The competition runs through qualifying rounds to a final in which the players take on Rodrigo's Fantasía para un gentilhombre with orchestra, a work Rodrigo wrote for Segovia himself. It is open to under-thirty-fives, and Queen Sofía of Spain has held its honorary presidency for decades, a mark of how seriously it is taken; past winners such as Joaquín Clerch and Franz Halász went on to major careers and often return to judge. But the reason the competition belongs here runs deeper than the coast. Segovia, the man who carried the guitar onto the concert stage, spent his boyhood in Granada, an hour inland, and Granada may be the most guitar-haunted city in Spain: it is the Alhambra of Tárrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra, of Albéniz's El Albaicín, of Turina's Danzas Gitanas with their echoes of the Generalife gardens and the caves of Sacromonte. Manuel de Falla lived out his Spanish years in a small white house on the Alhambra hill, now a museum you can walk through, and there staged Granada's famous 1922 cante jondo competition to rescue the deep song of Andalusian flamenco. To play the guitar in this corner of Spain is to play in its emotional homeland.

If you play as well as listen, explore Manuel Ponce, Segovia's own composer in our repertoire finder, where you can hear each piece and find the sheet music.

The local table

This is the Costa Tropical, so eat by the water: espetos of sardines grilled over driftwood fires, fried fish, grilled octopus, and the region's own avocados, mangoes and custard apples. A drink usually comes with a free tapa, as it should in Granada province.

Fancy a guided taste? Food and wine tours in Granada →

While you're there

The coast itself rewards a wander: Nerja, with its caves and the Balcón de Europa, lies just west, and the whitewashed villages of the Alpujarras climb into the hills behind. But the day to keep free is Granada, an hour inland. Book well ahead for the Alhambra and the Generalife gardens, the palace-fortress that echoes through half the guitar repertoire, then lose an afternoon in the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter of steep white lanes facing the palace across the ravine, and climb to Sacromonte for flamenco in its cave-houses after dark. On the Alhambra hill itself, the Casa-Museo Manuel de Falla keeps the composer's home much as he left it. And for the Segovia pilgrimage proper, his own Casa-Museo lies further north at Linares, in Jaén, where the maestro is buried alongside his guitar.

Tours, tickets and day trips in Granada →

More guitar events in Spain: Alhambra Junior International Guitar Competition (CIGAJ) · Certamen Miquel Llobet · CIGA - Alhambra International Guitar Competition · Concurso Ángel G. Piñero · Concurso Internacional de Madrid (FIGUIM) · Festival de la Guitarra de Córdoba

Also in November: Antwerpen Gitaarfestival · Brussels International Guitar Festival and Competition · Dani Klasične Gitare (Classical Guitar Days) · Hamburger Guitar Festival

Listing data is compiled from official sources and can change each edition. Always confirm dates, deadlines and requirements on the organizer's official website before applying or booking travel. Spotted an error? See our terms or let us know via the About page.

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