Carlos Marín opens Día de la Cruz

Granada’s Día de la Cruz is one of those local festivals that only really makes sense once you see the whole city flip at once. Flowers go up. Bars spill outward. Neighborhood associations, schools, brotherhoods, and shopkeepers build decorated crosses. This year’s official start came on May 2 in the courtyard of City Hall, where journalist and musician Carlos Marín delivered the pregón that opened the 2026 celebration and set the tone for the weekend. (granadahoy.com) ### Who is Carlos Marín? Marín was not a random celebrity pick. He is a Granada journalist and communicator, and he also leads communications for Cruz Roja Granada. That matters because the city did not just want a familiar voice — it wanted someone tied to local civic life, culture, and service. The choice had been announced in April when Granada unveiled both the festival poster and this year’s pregonero. (granadahoy.com) ### What did he actually do? He gave the formal pregón — basically the ceremonial opening speech that tells a city, “the festival starts now.” In Granada, that act is more than protocol. It is the official handoff from preparation to celebration. Marín spoke in the Ayuntamiento setting as the festival began on Saturday, May 2, launching two days of events that continue through May 3. (granadahoy.com) ### Why was his speech getting attention? Because it seems to have landed in the sweet spot this kind of speech needs. It was described as very granadino, warm, and funny, but also social in tone. The line people kept pulling out was the idea of a pregón “con dos cajones” — a wordplay that let Marín move between local humor and a nod to Granada’s (granadahoy.com). (granadahoy.com) ### What does “dos cajones” mean here? Basically, it is a playful phrase doing two jobs at once. One “cajón” is the festive, recognizably local side — jokes, memories, neighborhood references, the stuff that makes people feel the city is talking to itself. The other is the solidarity angle, tied to Marín’s work with the Red Cross and to the idea of a “Granada solidaria y voluntaria.” That is why the speech read as both celebratory and civic. (granadahoy.com) ### What was opening behind that speech? A big citywide program. Granada scheduled 53 crosses this year across categories including patios, streets and squares, brotherhoods, schools, and shop windows. The city also built out live music, flamenco school performances, and free concerts across the May 2-3 weekend. So the pregón was not an isolated ceremony — it was the switch that turned on a mapped, neighborhood-scale festival. (granadahoy.com) ### Why does Día de la Cruz matter so much in Granada? Because this is one of the city’s most rooted popular festivals. It mixes religion, spring ritual, neighborhood competition, tourism, and plain street life. Granada does not celebrate it as a single central event. It spreads the party through plazas, patios, and commercial streets, which means t(granadahoy.com)tters — it gives one civic opening to something otherwise scattered across the map. (granadahoy.com) ### Why did the city pair tradition with civic messaging? Because Granada is clearly using the festival as both heritage and public image. This year’s official materials leaned hard into identity — the poster, the neighborhood crosses, the cultural programming, the invitation to visitors, even the way Marín’s speech tied festivity to volunteerism. T(granadahoy.com)ve, and visitor-friendly all at once. That last part is an inference from how the city framed the event. (cope.es) ### Bottom line The news here is simple but not small. Carlos Marín did not just read a ceremonial speech. He opened one of Granada’s most visible local festivals with a message that fused neighborhood pride, humor, and solidarity — and that gave the 2026 Día de la Cruz a distinctly civic tone from the first hour. (granadahoy.com)