In recent years, around St. Patrick’s Day (17 March), Tourism Ireland has presented a full programme to celebrate the Irish culture in style and its connection to Celtic roots in Spain. The popular St. Patrick’s Parade through the city centre, an initiative by the musician Bras Rodrigo, stands out among the activities, which included more than 600 pipers from all over Spain in last year’s edition. In 2026, the events were held from 10 to 17 March.
It is a week with an agenda filled with activities related to Irish concerts, music and dance, film, gastronomy and other cultural events, and the icing on the cake will be the St. Patrick’s Parade through the centre of Madrid, scheduled for Saturday 14 March in the afternoon, which seeks to become a parade to match those in cities like New York, London or Dublin. The parade will start at 5pm at the Metrópolis Building and will go down Madrid’s Gran Vía until Plaza de España. In addition to the pipers, the parade will be joined by animators, dance groups, sports associations and a wide variety of participants. The day will be rounded off with a concert in Madrid’s central Plaza de Callao.
The fourth edition of Irish Week will kick off on Tuesday 10 March, bring the best sounds of Celtic music and dance to Gran Vía Metro Station, which will be transformed into the “Green Vía” and its rhombuses will be styled for the occasion. The entrance of the central Metro station will also be the venue for dancers and musicians from University College Dublin (UCD), who will be performing in the purest busking style every day of the week.
The literary events will start at 7.30pm on Wednesday 11 March at Casa del Lector (Matadero) organised by Desperate Literature bookstore with a bilingual reading and talk by the author Eimear McBride and the publisher Enrique Redel (Impedimenta Editorial), which will feature several readings in English and Spanish.
It will be the turn of the Irish Literature Reading Circuit at 7.30pm on Thursday 12 March, which will organise an event at Librería Párenthesis in Lavapiés. On St. Patrick’s Day, there will be a dual launch of Galician and Asturian poetry translated into English by Keith Payne with Skein Press. At 7pm, on the same day, Joyceans from Madrid Athenæum will host a reading of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift to mark the 300th anniversary of its publication.
This year, films will also be featured with the screening of two films on 11 and 13 March at La Casa de Vacas del Retiro and Cine Doré at the Filmoteca Española respectively. For those looking for talks and experiences to gain a better understanding of Ireland, Experience Ireland will be held on 13 March at 7pm in the Cultural Hall at El Corte Inglés in Callao; and at 7pm on 16 March, B Travel & Catai Chamberí will be organising an interesting travel talk on Ireland through literature by the writer and journalist, Use Lahoz.
17 March commemorates the anniversary of the death of St. Patrick in 461 in Saul in County Down. He was captured in Wales or Scotland during his childhood and taken as a slave to Slemish Mountain in County Antrim. He worked as a shepherd there until he managed to escape and return home. He later had a vision that urged him to return to Ireland to spread Christianity.
The first St Patrick’s Day Parade was held in Boston (United States) in 1737, whilst the first celebration of this kind in Ireland was in Waterford in 1903.
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