Festa de la Sega (Rice Harvest Festival)

By late September the rice fields out on the Ebro Delta have turned gold and the whole place gets to work bringing in the crop. This is the morning the village marks the end of the harvest, down by the river at the interactive rice field. You'll hear jotas, the local folk songs, sung out across the flats while you sample Delta cooking made from the grain that grows right here.

Half the spectacle is just watching the Delta do its thing. Tractors crawl along the roads, and clouds of birds wheel in behind them, picking over the cut fields. It's an unhurried, properly rural affair rather than a polished tourist show, which is rather the point. Bring sun cover and an appetite, and you'll get a real feel for how this flat, watery corner of the Costa Daurada actually lives.