Days 8, 9 & 10: Bear Week
This was the whole reason for the trip. Everything before it — Madrid, the Reina Sofía, the high-speed train, the Sagrada Família, the slow beach days, the impulsive morning in Girona — all of that was prologue. Bear Week is the reason I came to Spain. And I need to say upfront what Bear Week is, because if you have not heard of it: it is one of the largest bear gatherings in Europe. Bears, as in the queer bear community — gay and bisexual men who tend toward the bigger, hairier, and more relaxed end of the masc spectrum, and the culture that has grown up around that. Bear events exist in most major cities and a handful of small ones, and then there is Sitges in September, which is in a different category entirely. Thousands of bears from across Europe and beyond, converging on a small Mediterranean beach town for a week of parties, drag shows, poolside afternoons, and the particular joy of being in an environment built entirely for you.
When Bear Week arrives, the town shifts. The promenade fills. Every bar has a theme night. Every restaurant is packed by nine. Shops put out bear flags in their windows. Restaurants post welcome signs. The locals are not just tolerant of the event — they have been hosting it for years and they are genuinely into it. Sitges does not just allow Bear Week to happen in it. It throws its arms around the whole thing and squeezes.
Cabaret Night
Day 8 was cabaret night, and I walked in expecting a few guys in wigs on a small stage doing some lip-sync numbers. That is not what I got. What I got was a full production with feathered headdresses, sequined costumes, live vocals, lighting cues, and costume changes. Coordinated dancers in routines that required actual rehearsal. A performer in a pink satin gown who commanded the stage with the ease of someone who has been doing this for a long time, because she clearly has. A drag queen in a sequined black top with a white ruffled collar, holding a single red rose, working the room with nothing but presence and voice and an expression that communicated she knew exactly what she was doing and you were welcome to catch up. These were not local amateurs filling a time slot. These were working artists performing in a beach town on a Friday night and not dropping a single standard in the process.
The rose performer stopped the room. Full stop. I have seen a lot of drag. I have seen performances in some of the best queer venues in Europe. This was the real thing. I took the photo because I knew at the time I would want it. I was right. Still think about that performance.
The Streets, the Shops, the Everything
Days 9 and 10 were about the town itself at full Bear Week volume. The narrow streets become something else entirely once the event is running. Shops selling bear gear — t-shirts, novelties, things I cannot fully describe here without raising eyebrows, things that made me laugh out loud in the middle of the street. Street art tucked into alleys: a mural of a woman driving a vintage yellow car bright against old stone walls, there long before Bear Week and completely unbothered by the context around it. The church tower visible at the end of almost every street, the same tower that has been watching over Sitges since the 17th century, now watching over a crowd of gay bears from forty different countries. The contrast does not create tension. It just exists, and the combination is one of the things that makes Sitges different from every other place that hosts a bear event. History and joy occupying the same space without either needing to apologize for the other.
Found a bar with a rainbow-painted ceiling packed wall to wall on what I believe was a Tuesday. Not a Friday, not a Saturday. Tuesday. A night with no particular event attached to it, just Sitges being Sitges. The Funny Beards party was on the event schedule — because of course there is a Funny Beards party, and of course it is exactly as good as that sounds — along with the Furry Party, pool parties, beach parties, bar crawls, and more themed nights than any one person could attend in three days. The event lineup was genuinely relentless. Something going on every single night, often multiple things at once. You could not do it all. You had to pick, accept that you would miss something excellent whatever you chose, and commit.
The image that stays with me, the one I keep coming back to when I think about this trip, is the promenade at night. Thousands of gay men packed along the waterfront. Talking, laughing, drinking, taking photos, dancing to music coming from somewhere, just existing. The old church on the headland lit up behind them, the one that has been watching over this coastline since 1745 — this ancient building presiding over a crowd of queer men from every country I could name, in a moment of complete, unguarded joy. There is something about that image — the sacred and the joyful sharing the same frame, neither one diminishing the other — that hit me in a way I was not expecting and that I have not been able to put down since.
Bear Week is a party. Obviously. Great parties, loud nights, late mornings, all of it. But it is also a gathering. It is a community of gay men who have spent years finding each other, building spaces together, claiming a right to take up room and be exactly who they are in public. And Sitges — this small, old, Catholic coastal town with a 500-year-old church — looks at that community every September and says: you belong here. Come back next year. That is not something you find everywhere. It is not something most places even try to offer. When you find it, you do not forget it.
I have been to a lot of places. I have seen a lot of things. Bear Week in Sitges is one of the best experiences of my life, and I am saying that plainly without hedging it. Not just as a party. As a place. As a week of being somewhere that was built for people like me, that genuinely wanted us there, and that delivered on every version of that promise. Walking down the street and having every face around you be happy. Meeting strangers over a drink and talking until the bar closed. Being exactly who you are, all the way, with nothing to explain or minimize. If you are a bear, or bear-adjacent, or queer and looking for a week that will show you what it feels like when a whole community gathers in one place and lets itself fully exist: book the flight. You will not regret it. I would go back tomorrow.
