Guieldu at folkomillas 2025

Comillas, Cantabria

A first trip to Cantabria that exceeded every expectation

Folkomil­las, back in June 2025, was our chance to bring Guiel­du to Cantabria for the first time. We’d been itch­ing to play in our neigh­bour­ing region for a while — it has a prop­er­ly live­ly folk scene and a whole net­work of fes­ti­vals that, like so many grass­roots cul­tur­al projects, are kept alive by the sheer graft and good­will of the peo­ple who run them.

Folkomil­las sits right near the top of that list. Get­ting the call to play Comil­las — one of the pret­ti­est towns on Spain’s north­ern coast — meant a lot more to us than just anoth­er date in the diary. It was our Cantabri­an debut, a chance to catch up with friends, and the first real test of how our music would land with a new crowd.

One of the loveli­est things was find­ing our­selves on the same bill, same day, as our friends in 6 Riales. We watched their after­noon set from the crowd, and a few hours lat­er we were back up on stage togeth­er, this time join­ing them for “Ron­des” — the song we co-wrote for Mem­o­ries de Deva. Get­ting to play a track from the album live, along­side the very peo­ple we wrote it with, was one of those small gifts a fes­ti­val like this hands you.

The crowd’s response to our show was some­thing else entire­ly. We’ve rarely felt an audi­ence so switched-on and up for it from the very first notes, and that ener­gy nev­er let up for the whole con­cert — pure joy to play into.

Next up were Corquiéu, dear friends from back home in Asturias who’ve built them­selves a prop­er fol­low­ing in Cantabria over the years. Among them was Celia on fid­dle, who spent Guiel­d­u’s ear­ly years with us — so shar­ing a stage with her again, this time from oppo­site sides of it, meant a great deal.

Cantabri­a’s own Tudan­ca closed out the night. A band with their own dis­tinc­tive take on the folk style — a crack­ing way to wrap up Fri­day, the fes­ti­val’s open­ing day.

The Folkomil­las team looked after us bril­liant­ly from start to fin­ish. This is a fes­ti­val that can hold its head up along­side the best of them — the pro­gram­ming, the care put into every sin­gle day of it. Being part of that line-up was a gen­uine privilege.

The whole trip left us think­ing about some­thing big­ger than that one night, too. Gali­cia, Asturias, Cantabria, León and north­ern Por­tu­gal all share deep musi­cal roots and many points of con­nec­tion, but there’s still far too lit­tle move­ment of bands between our own neigh­bour­ing regions.

Asturi­an acts make the trip to Cantabria fair­ly often, but it’s a lot rar­er the oth­er way round. There are some bril­liant Cantabri­an bands we’d love to see gig­ging in Asturias far more reg­u­lar­ly. We’d love noth­ing more than to see that traf­fic build in both direc­tions, with fes­ti­vals on each side mak­ing more room to share artists and ideas.

In the end, that kind of move­ment between neigh­bour­ing regions is exact­ly how you build an inter-Celtic net­work of our own, right here on the Iber­ian Penin­su­la: not just shared roots, but shared stages, shared crowds, shared chances.

What we took home from Comil­las — and espe­cial­ly from the mes­sages that fol­lowed on social media — was the feel­ing that the crowd there was already look­ing for­ward to see­ing Guiel­du again in Cantabria. We hope that ener­gy does­n’t stay con­fined to one night or one stage. There are still Cantabri­an fes­ti­vals we haven’t made it to, and after every­thing Folkomil­las gave us, we’re cer­tain that reunion is com­ing — and it’ll be a spe­cial one.

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© Fotos: Enrique M.