L’Aplec dels Ports is a protest, cultural and festive demonstration.

L’Aplec dels Ports is a protest, cultural and festive demonstration involving eight towns in the region. Year after year, one of these eight towns oversees the organisation of the event, scheduling all activities in order to fight for the culture, language and identity of its people, as well as demanding governments to provide a better treatment, visibilising problems of these small rural communities: depopulation, deficient roads, shortage in health care centers, lack of resources in rural schools, etc.

Its beginnings date back to the year 1978, when some youngsters from the region arranged a meeting in Todolella in order to deal with problems, fight for their rights and foster a sense of belonging to a region, a shared history, dignifying the fact of being born in a rural area, with homogeneous language, culture and traditions. In fact, Aplec is the word in Valencian referring to gathering.

Year after year, these meetings were being held, and being progressively completed with traditional dances of each town and other elements of the rich heritage of the region and musical performances to provide the event with a festive atmosphere. Thus, after almost forty years of trajectory, L’Aplec dels Ports still has the protest purpouse it had when it was born and it has reached, simultaneously, the status of true music festival with special nuances, whose organisation involves, altruistically, all the inhabitants of the host population, from the youngest to the oldest.

Because of its paramount importance and long history, as well as because of its democratic values and its contribution to the defense of both Valencian language and culture, this regional event has been awarded the Vicent Ventura award in 2015, from the University of Valencia, and the Valencià de l’Any from the Huguet foundation, in 2016.