CANNA FRINGE - What's it all about?

Irishman Stephen Garland has been a serial entrepreneur and international Arts Professional for over 30 years operating across Europe, mainly in his beloved adopted city Barcelona.

His first event in the city was a multidisciplinary Irish and Celtic Culture Arts festival called El Feile which ran for more than 6 years from 2004 to 2010. The fist edition of that festival included the first professional English language Comedy show to ever take place on the Iberian peninsula spawning an infamous comedy club The Giggling Guiri which ran successfully until 2023...

Along the way that comedy business also gave rise in 2008 to Barcelona Comedy Festival which in 2025 will seek to present it's 17th edition!!

Over those years Stephen has been instrumental in helping the now really vibrant Comedy scene in Barcelona develop into what it is today one of Europe's leading comedy capitals! Over these years he hosted some of the very biggest names in entertainment from Eddie Izzard to Blindboy and most notably he was responsible for the legendary Howard Mark's a.k.a Mr Nice

Those only ever Spanish performances of the great activist inspired greatly and we remained in contact until his untimely passing in 2016 but we will make his 10 year commemoration central to our festival

So Why the Canna??

Founder Stephen Garland - Quick Bio

Edinburgh Fringe provides the roadmap!

'The Fringe' started life when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited to the inaugural Edinburgh International Festival in 1947. With the International Festival using the city's major venues, these companies took over smaller, alternative venues for their productions.

Over the year's it kept this maverick spirit by always maintaining its un-curated Open Invitational structure which means anyone with a show