As well as the usual classical music seasons, there is a vibrant series of festivals which, although peaking in the summer months, can be enjoyed throughout the year. More than 150 classical music festivals take place in Spain every year. Some, such as those held in Santander, San Sebastián, Cuenca, Granada and Perelada, have a long tradition. Others - every bit as attractive - are more recent creations. In addition, there are the regular concert cycles, such as the excellent early music cycle "Los Siglos de Oro" held in Madrid, offering concerts throughout the year.

There is hardly enough space here to list and comment on all the programmes of all the festivals scheduled for next year, but as a sample we detail in chronological order just some of those due to be held from January until early summer, 2006.

The year kicks off with the 22nd Canary Islands Music Festival, with concerts in both Santa Cruz (Tenerife) and Las Palmas (Grand Canary). From 7 January to 18 February, the festival will devote much of its programme to the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mozart and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dmitri Shostakovich. Once again, a major highlight of this year’s "winter festival" is the appearance of the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink. In addition to the LSO, there will be performances by the Royal Concertgebouw, The Hague Residentie Orchestra, under the direction of Jaap van Zweden, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, and the Suisse Romande, appearing at the festival for the first time.

As always, the greater part of the programme will be performed by the two excellent Canary Island orchestras: the Grand Canary Philharmonic and the Tenerife Symphonic. Guest artists include such big international names as Juan Diego Flórez, Bo Skvohus, the sopranos María Orán, Claudia Barainsky and Cristina Gallardo-Domâs,the pianists Murray Perahia, Iván Martín and Gustav Díaz Jerez and the violinist Sarah Chang. The Mozart celebrations will include performances of Don Giovanni, the Violin Concertos and La Clemenza di Tito, while those marking the Shostakovich centenary will include some of the composer’s major symphonies performed by the LSO.

Over the last three years, Musika-Musika has become a must on the Spanish music scene. Following on from La Folle Journée in Nantes, during the first weekend in March, Bilbao hosts a music marathon featuring the artists who have previously performed at the French classical music festival during the month of January. Each year, the Musika-Musika programme is built around a unifying theme or composer. This year, the common theme of the festival is "The Harmony of Nations", and the special focus of the programme is Baroque music, underlining the European dimension as a cultural basis for harmony between peoples. From 3 to 5 March, Bilbao’s Palacio Euskalduna will offer a varied selection of the principal works of J. S. Bach and Telemann (Germany), Manuel Blasco de Nebra and Antonio Soler (Spain), François Couperin and Rameau (France), Handel and Purcell (England), Domenico Scarlatti and Vivaldi (Italy) and Carlos Seixas and Francisco António de Almeida (Portugal). Participating orchestras and ensembles include the RIAS Kammerchor, Concerto Köln, Das Neue Orchester, Jordi Savall and Hespérion XXI, La Venexiana, Europa Galante, Accentus, the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra, Capriccio Stravagante and Stradivaria.

The Seville Early Music Festival, organized by Seville City Hall, is one of the oldest in Spain. This year’s festival has been given a new look by Manuel Ferrand, who has set out to reflect the history and heritage of Seville in the music included in the programme. From 18 March to 1 April, the Festival will offer concerts at a number of symbolic venues, including the traditional Teatro Lope de Vega, the Reales Alcázares and some of Seville’s most beautiful churches. Sixteen concerts, including several morning performances, will feature works by some of the most important Andalusian composers. These include the Misa Mille Regretz by Morales, performed by Trinity Baroque. Monica Huggett and the Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla will give two concerts, one of which will be devoted to Bach, and Pierre Hantai will perform a group of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. The outstanding trio formed by Savall, Hantai and Lislevand will offer a programme devoted to the music of Marin Marais. Claudio Cavina and La Venexiana, appearing with the exceptional vihuela and Baroque guitar virtuoso Juan Carlos Rivera, will give a programme of Monteverdi’s Madrigals entitled "Era la notte". Springtime in Seville promises to be more enchanting than ever this year.

In the four years since it was created, the Pórtico de Zamora Festival has established itself as one of the most exquisite and attractive events on the Spanish musical scene. In terms of programming, setting and organization, the Pórtico Festival is a small gem that invariably delights the most discerning and inquiring of audiences. Each year the programme revolves around a theme; in 2006, the theme running through the series of seven attractive concerts, spread over two consecutive weekends (24 - 26 March and 31 March - 2 April), is "Liber Mariae". The first weekend’s concerts will include Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, performed by The Scholars Baroque Ensemble, a programme entitled "Requiem", with music by Lassus and Palestrina, performed by The Hilliard Ensemble, and a programme entitled "Manuscripts: Hidden Treasures" from the Ensemble Dialogos, one of today’s most extraordinary ensembles specialising in medieval music, in conjunction with Katarina Livljanic. The second weekend will feature Patricia Bovi’s Ensemble Micrologus with the programme "Cantigas de Santa María & Liber Mariae", Martin Gester’s Le Parlement de Musique performing Alessandro Scarlatti’s Stabat Mater, the Florilegium Ensemble with Ashley Solomon and Emma Kirkby, in a programme entitled "Salve Regina", and a seventh surprise concert that has yet to be announced.

The 15th Cuenca Sacred Music Week, to be held from 7 to 16 April, will focus on the music of Mozart. Offering its usual series of 22 concerts, it will include three first performances and two major historical revivals. The festival opens with one of Mozart’s lesser-known works, the cantata Davide Penitente, performed by the Orquesta Nacional de España (ONE) under its resident conductor, Josep Pons, and closes with the "Coronation" Mass. Other featured works include the motet Exultate Jubilate, the "Great" Mass in C Minor and Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s Messiah, performed by The Sixteen and The Symphony of Harmony and Invention, conducted by Harry Christophers. Historical revivals include the oratorio La Gloria de los Santos, composed in 1715 by Pere Rabassa, and an anthology of 17th-century polyphony by the composers Juan Bautista Comes, Sebastián López de Velasco, Carlos Patiño and Cristóbal Galán. Among the artists making their debut at the festival are the Tokyo Quartet, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra under its resident conductor Eliahu Inbal, and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century under the direction of Frans Brüggen. Finally, Krzystof Penderecki will conduct the National Youth Orchestra of Spain (JONDE), the Coro de la Generalitat Valenciana and the Choir of Escolanía de Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados in a performance of one of his major works, the St Luke Passion, written in 1966.

The Mozart Festival, which will be held in Corunna from 5th May to 2nd June, focuses on early Baroque opera of the 17th century and pre-Romantic opera of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with particular emphasis on the works of Mozart and Rossini. This year’s festival will not include operas by Mozart, but will instead feature melodramas which are in some way connected with Mozart’s operas, such as Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea which, with its blend of comedy and tragedy, of the sacred and the profane, foreshadows the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy, and The Rake’s Progress, in which Stravinsky takes his inspiration from the score of The Marriage of Figaro, or, then again, Le Comte Ory, in which Rossini is no less daring than Mozart was before him in Così fan tutte. The 2006 edition of the festival also includes operas on Mozartian themes and characters, written by composers such as Melani, Purcell, Gazzinaga, Pacini, Tritto, Dargomïzhsky, and others, in staged or semi-staged versions, as well as concert programmes in which Mozart is featured either as the arranger of works by Bach, Handel and others, or as the inspiration for operas by composers of various periods, including Gluck, Reger, Liszt, Strauss and Sciarrino.