One Hobby, Many Beginnings — A History of Live Action Roleplaying. How Spanish live action roleplaying evolved from Barcelona’s early adventures to historical rebellions, medieval communities, fantasy festivals and international immersive experiences.
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Galicia, October 2007: When history was given a second chance
The castle of Monterrei rises above the Galician landscape, its ancient walls overlooking countryside that has witnessed centuries of conflict. In October 2007 the fortress again became the centre of a struggle between nobles and commoners. The weapons were safe replicas. The armies were composed of roleplayers. Yet their conflict recalled the real Irmandiño uprisings of the fifteenth century. Hundreds gathered for Irmandiños: A Revolta. Some defended aristocratic power; others joined the brotherhoods challenging it. They brought costumes, heraldry, personal ambitions and competing plans. They made camps, negotiated alliances and prepared for battle.
Above all, participants were not obliged to reproduce a predetermined result. The historical revolts of 1467–1469 initially challenged aristocratic domination before the military return of the nobles. The 2007 game allowed a different result to be explored. A contemporary A Nosa Terra report described approximately 500 participants and said the rebels had an opportunity to reverse the previous game’s outcome. The nobles ultimately won again. History had won, at least this time.
The organisers were 13 Negativo, cooperating with Galician youth authorities. Contemporary January 2008 coverage reported a Guinness recognition, with nearly 1,000 people when players, actors and staff were counted together. This total is not the number of active player characters and should not become a claim of an eternal world record. The more significant achievement was turning regional memory into a shared experience in which choices mattered.
Mara watches the castle. “Could the villagers really have won?” “They could have won the game,” Eljara replies. “Real history would remain, but the players could explore another possibility.” Sean nods. “Apparently the nobles were just as hard to remove the second time.”
Spain’s LARP history has more than one beginning
Spanish live action roleplaying cannot be reduced to one founding association or city. The clubs of Barcelona, Catalonia’s medieval social experiments, central Spain’s fantasy gatherings, Galician historical productions, Andalusian festivals and later immersive communities developed different answers to the same creative challenge. Some preferred rules and tactical combat; others immersive societies, personal drama or experimentation. They coexisted, competed and exchanged methods. It is misleading to describe them as a straight succession of ever more advanced styles. Spain offers a history of several creative identities within one hobby.
1987: A fantasy adventure in a Barcelona park
On 1 March 1987 the roleplaying club Auryn organised a live fantasy adventure in Barcelona’s Parc del Turó. A contemporary account appeared in the May 1987 issue of the Spanish magazine Troll; Rol de los 90 later revisited it using that archival record. Two kingdoms, Dafar and Holgart, had sent adventurers to retrieve an Elixir of Life discovered by the magician Novokerd. Characters searched, confronted rivals and solved problems in real space. Organisers tested a combat system using injury cards and removable markers, while improvised magic effects included streamers and small pyrotechnics. Such experimentation is historical evidence, not a template for modern safety practice.
The organiser’s problems were already familiar: how to turn tabletop descriptions into actual movement, how to handle conflict without dice, and how to coordinate groups acting simultaneously. It is an early documented LARP, not an unquestionably proven first. Later recollections mention missing park permission, an unhappy attendant, a ninja in the bushes and an elixir supposedly revealed as Coca-Cola. They enrich the picture but are decades-later memories distinct from the 1987 report.
“A fantasy war, an immortal elixir and a ninja in a public park,” says Sean. “Sounds about right.” Chibi asks whether the ninja was caught. “The record doesn’t tell us,” Eljara replies.
The 1990s: From experiments to published rules
The growing Spanish tabletop RPG culture of clubs, conventions, shops and publishers supported live play. In 1991 Barcelona publisher Joc Internacional released Steve Jackson’s Killer: The Game of Assassination in Spanish as Killer, juego de rol en vivo. An assassin game rather than a medieval fantasy festival, it nevertheless helped establish terminology and make physical roleplay visible in print. In November 1995 Yggdrasil Jocs published Espada y brujería by Aitor and Unai Ruiz Lacasa, documented as the first commercially published LARP rulebook authored in Spain. A published system did not make everyone adopt it, but provided shareable methods for organisers previously improvising their solutions.
1996: A whole medieval week in Catalonia
Time Lords and Club del Joc AsaK staged the I Semana Medieval de Ancs from 15–21 July 1996 in a nearly abandoned Pyrenean village. The fictional year was 1214. A contemporary account by Jordi Bofarull in Líder magazine describes a remarkable immersion attempt: modern watches forbidden, time marked by village bells, candles and torches in place of electric light, period-inspired crockery and invented money. Meals, marriages, religious observances, investitures, public punishments, hunting and communal life were part of play. Only late in the week did approaching Frankish crusaders trigger the concluding conflict, fought with safe LARP weapons.
The historical importance lies in the days preceding the battle. A threat to a village where characters have shared meals and formed relationships feels different from a battlefield encounter between strangers. Mara asks if they really stayed all week. Caelwyn explains they wanted to inhabit a whole community. “I’d bring lots of candles,” says Chibi.
Some later sources date Time Lords’ beginnings to 1995, while the surviving 1996 article explicitly calls its event the first Semana Medieval de Ancs. These may refer to the organisation and the event respectively; the difference should not be erased. The tradition shows that sustained immersion did not require thousands of participants.
2001: EFEYL and organised fantasy communities
EFEYL — Encuentros de Fantasía, Ensueño y Leyenda — developed a wider identity around fantasy, recreation, craft, education and art. A particularly well documented gathering, La Noche de los Vencedores, took place at the Castillo de San Servando in Toledo on 23–25 March 2001. Political agreements among Kendoria’s nobility, supernatural threats and conflicting character ambitions unfolded in a real castle. EFEYL subsequently organised numerous events and helped strengthen a culture of recurring participation and shared organiser skills.
Soledad Gómez, writing as Anarwen for Líder, reported more women than men at this early meeting, something the organisers had not anticipated when distributing character roles. It is an illuminating local detail, not a national demographic statistic. Stacy observes that the design assumptions did not match those arriving. “Write the world for the people actually playing it,” Sean says. Volunteers, writers, costume-makers and safety coordinators developed skills on which later larger productions would depend.
Historical Spain becomes playable
Fantasy did not exhaust Spain’s possibilities. Medieval Catalonia, the Galician uprisings, Iberian religious histories and local cultural memory offered material for participatory events. The Catalan Feria del Vellón, documented from the early 2000s, drew on Ricard Ibáñez’s historical-horror tabletop RPG Aquelarre. A market, inn, rumour or transaction could serve as a story engine. Historical reenactment and historical LARP are not identical: the former often reconstructs an event or practice, while the latter can use a researched context to explore choices that never occurred. Irmandiños would take this distinction to a different scale.
2006–2008: The Irmandiños experiment
The first Irmandiños: A Revolta was held in September 2006, developed by 13 Negativo with Galician institutions to connect entertainment, heritage and regional history. Early participation was below 300 players according to contemporary and later reports. By October 2007 the event had expanded. Its fictional sequence continued from the noble victory in the first year: the brotherhoods received another chance to overturn their defeat. The premise drew on 1469 but was not a literal reconstruction of a single documented battle at Monterrei.
A Nosa Terra’s 11 October 2007 report on printed page 17 records roughly 500 participants, factions and visitors from other regions, including Catalans with purpose-built siege equipment. It discusses referees, safety arrangements and restrictions intended to protect the actual castle. The historic fortress was never expendable scenery. The third edition returned in 2008. January 2008 newspapers reported Guinness recognition using larger totals that counted performers and organisers alongside players. The figures must remain distinct.
Caelwyn reflects: “The remarkable thing isn’t just that hundreds came to fight. The first event’s outcome became the second event’s starting condition.” Stacy replies: “That’s when a world begins to remember — when participants contribute something that carries forward.”
Long-running worlds beyond Galicia
Catalonia’s Arcaron linked events within one fictional history from 2004 to 2014, proving that depth and continuity need not depend on the size of a single gathering. Crónicas de Hyboria, associated with Conan, is documented from 2009; Valencia’s El Despertar de Cyric drew on the Forgotten Realms from 2011. The swashbuckling 7º Mar 1720 appeared from 2012 in locations including Albarracín and Alarcón. These projects reveal combat, intrigue, loyalty and literary adventure all existing within the Spanish scene. Castles, streets, villages and isolated spaces influenced not just appearance but encounters, movement and relations.
Tierra de Nadie: Meeting across traditions
Tierra de Nadie, founded in 2003 at the Centro Eurolatinoamericano de la Juventud in Mollina, Málaga, became a major annual gathering of tabletop RPG, board games, workshops and live roleplay. Málaga Hoy documented its sixth edition in August 2008. Rather than one vast fictional world, TdN offered numerous short, self-contained games. Chamber larps can work with fewer people in restricted rooms, giving designers room to experiment with emotional tensions, relationships and structure instead of massive logistics.
In her 2017 overview designer and historian Mirella Machancoses described Tierra de Nadie as important for Spanish chamber larp and reported roughly 100 short live games in a wider convention of about 1,000 people at that time. These are attributed, time-specific estimates, not universal attendance counts. The official 2026 gathering was listed for 6–10 August in Mollina. A convention of many games is not one LARP involving all conventiongoers.
Feria del Dragón: A fantasy society
Andalusia’s Feria del Dragón, organised by Asociación Fénix, evolved through the 2010s as a festival of markets, ceremonies, conflict, trade and politics as well as battle. The 2025 dossier emphasises character interpretation, collaborative storytelling and a philosophy the organisers call Neosandbox: organisational narrative and player stories both shape the setting. That term describes their method, not a globally standardised genre. A farmer, merchant, noble, soldier or diplomat can matter through relationships and decisions without every dramatic moment requiring combat.
“A convincing society needs more than soldiers,” Eljara points out. Stacy lists commerce, information, status and personal loyalties as forms of power. An imaginary society grows more convincing when its institutions and everyday obligations affect what characters can do.
Lágrimas de la Tormenta: One world’s continuing war
Fénix also linked Feria del Dragón to the more martial Lágrimas de la Tormenta and smaller events within a connected fictional chronology. The 2024–2025 dossiers describe results carrying from one event into another: reputations, political agreements, allegiances and conflicts may persist. The 2025 Feria documentation describes fictional time broadly advancing alongside real time between gatherings. Such a structure needs records, communication and flexibility so new players remain welcome.
The 2025 Feria was its twelfth edition according to the organiser. For 2026 Fénix announced a thirteenth Feria and the tenth Lágrimas de la Tormenta, advertised for 8–11 October in El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz. Organiser claims that it is a leading battle-oriented event should not become an independently verified ranking.
“If I win a castle, can I keep it?” Chibi asks. “Possibly,” says Caelwyn, “but everyone else has a say about what happens next.” “That’s not fair!” Sean smiles: “Welcome to politics.”
2015: Fantasy on the Isla Esmeralda
The Festival de la Isla Esmeralda began in 2015 on the island of Zuhatza in Álava, associated with Versum Eventos. Camps and competing fantasy factions gave the geography dramatic meaning: the island could feel temporarily separate from everyday life. The 2016 participant report describes scheduled scenes, camps, a final battle and lessons from the inaugural event, including logistics and the balance of prepared and freely created experiences. Later accounts report more than 400 attendees in 2019, an attributed estimate rather than an audited count. A distinctive location alone does not create immersion; participants must have the shared structure and freedom to make it matter.
2013: EntreReVs and dialogue between designers
EntreReVs began in 2013 as a meeting that travelled between regions, bringing Spanish live roleplay communities together for workshops, discussion and shorter games. It was less about inhabiting one particular setting than about exchanging ideas for designing the medium. Different traditions — rules-intensive fantasy, historical immersion, psychological drama and character mysteries — met without needing to merge. Mirella Machancoses’s 2017 overview describes the increasing influence of international and Nordic larp techniques through exchange, adaptation and collaboration. Spain was not simply replacing one native tradition with an imported method. Experimental spaces such as Avanlarp also encouraged the testing of shorter games.
Beyond battle: Narrative experimentation
Smaller Spanish larps explored social pressure, identity and conflicting loyalties without relying on conventional combat or numerical systems. The 2024 doctoral research by Alba Torrebejano Osorio identifies Somnia’s 2008 Matar a un Brujo as a possible early Spanish rules-free experiment, carefully framed as a pioneering possibility rather than an absolute first. Innovations often travel through undocumented groups. What matters is the changing design question: not just whether a character can defeat an opponent, but what participants experience when confronted with a difficult fictional social situation. Emotional play makes consent, personal boundaries and distinctions between character and player essential.
International audiences: Robota and La Sirena Varada
Somnia’s 2014 Robota in the Valencia region used a post-apocalyptic social structure to investigate labour, dependence, exclusion and authority, with bilingual support for Spanish and English. The 2015 La Sirena Varada, inspired by Alejandro Casona’s 1934 play, explored an artistic community and psychological reality for an international English-speaking audience. These are documented as pioneering international steps in Spain’s scene, though every claim of a first needs its source.
Other experiments included Blue Flame, staged in 2016–2017 by NotOnlyLarp with Producciones Gorgona involved in its first run, which explored political obedience and medication in a dystopia; and Gorgona’s 2017 ‘Til Mafia Do Us Part, framed as a twentieth-century organised-crime wedding. Their focus differed sharply from Monterrei’s armies. Spain became a contributor to international immersive design, not merely a recipient of foreign ideas.
NotOnlyLarp and larptivism
NotOnlyLarp’s international productions included Conscience, Blue Flame, Inconscience and Thyself. The organisation used the term larptivism for its belief that live roleplay can encourage reflection on society and social change. This is the organisers’ philosophy, not proof that every game achieves those outcomes. Immersive experiences centred on morally or emotionally challenging situations need careful consent and safety practices. The 2025 Feria del Dragón dossier explicitly discussed emotional safety and acknowledged methods adapted from NotOnlyLarp and other resources, showing ideas crossing between narrative experiments and fantasy festivals. Different kinds of LARP may share a responsibility to protect their participants.
The disruption of 2020 and the return
COVID-19 restrictions disrupted a hobby dependent on physical gatherings and created difficult continuity questions. Should fictional time stop while players cannot meet? Can the world move without removing player agency? Different organisers answered differently. Chains LARP traces its Origen project to ideas around 2015, a public presentation in 2019 and, after pandemic delays, the first event Epílogo in 2022. Members brought experience from Arcaron, which had ended in 2014. The new world was not the old world’s sequel; it showed how practices, friendships and creative knowledge survive between projects.
Licensed worlds and professional immersion
Commercial and professionally produced larps became more visible in the 2020s. Efimeral Events developed experiences inspired by The Witcher, John Wick and other settings. Algo termina, algo comienza explored diplomacy and the future of the Northern Kingdoms inside The Witcher’s fictional world, with editions marketed in Spanish and English. The organiser described it within an authorised tabletop-RPG context; that should not be expanded into unsupported claims about specific licensing relationships. Efimeral also advertised The Witcher: Aretuza for April 2026. Familiar franchises may bring new audiences into LARP, but professional staging and meaningful player agency are distinct. A spectacular location alone cannot guarantee that players’ decisions shape the world.
2024: Academic research in Granada
On 25 January 2024 Alba Torrebejano Osorio defended her doctoral thesis, Intermedialidad y transmedialidad en los mundos narrativos de los juegos de rol en vivo, at the University of Granada. It examines LARP alongside theatre, tabletop games and other media, incorporating event participation and interviews with Spanish designers. Such research helps recover local experiments, collaborations and techniques absent from mainstream press. The thesis identifies Despertalia, founded by Miguel Ángel Talha in 2007, as the earliest documented professional Spanish LARP company — a carefully bounded historical finding, not a claim that no earlier commercial activity existed. It also considers Somnia, urban games and the international projects Robota and La Sirena Varada.
Spain in 2026: Many traditions, one medium
By 2026 Spain’s scene encompassed fantasy festivals, local historical events, psychological chamber larps, international immersive productions, workshops and years-long campaigns. It should not be judged solely against the huge German festivals ConQuest or Drachenfest or Britain’s politically complex Empire LRP. Different formats make different experiences possible. Thirty participants may sustain intimate emotional relationships; a vast festival can make a whole factional society visible; historical settings bring real architecture and memory into play. The central question is not which format is most advanced but what each allows participants to experience and change.
The world begins to remember
From a Barcelona park in 1987 through a week in medieval Ancs, Toledo’s EFEYL gathering, Galician rebellion, national conventions and shared festival worlds, Spain’s live roleplay history offers many answers to one question: how can an imaginary situation become meaningful to people inhabiting it? Participation means more than attendance. It can mean acting, affecting others and experiencing consequences within agreed boundaries. A kingdom can have hundreds of pages of written lore, but when its players create history that later players must reckon with, the world becomes theirs as well.
Eljara closes her notebook: “Spain didn’t invent one single style. Different communities found their own ways to turn play into culture.” Stacy reminds her that small events leave fewer archives than spectacular ones. Sean wonders how many brilliant games left no paperwork. “Or photographs,” Caelwyn adds. Mara asks whether players know they’re making history. “Most probably just hope for a wonderful weekend,” Caelwyn replies. Chibi raises his little flag. “I want my own kingdom!” “Of course you do,” Sean mutters.
At Monterrei in 2007 the real fifteenth-century rebellion was already history. Participants could not rewrite the past, but for one weekend they could attempt a different result. They created another shared story inside historical memory. One hobby. Many beginnings. Countless worlds made together. Worlds That Remember. Stories That Matter.
Historical sources and further reading
Contemporary reports, organiser documentation, recollections and academic studies have different evidentiary weight. Figures and firsts remain attributed to their respective sources.
- Auryn 1987
- Yggdrasil Jocs
- Time Lords / Ancs
- EFEYL
- EFEYL 2001
- A Nosa Terra (2007)
- La Voz de Galicia (2008)
- La Región (2008)
- Tierra de Nadie
- Málaga Hoy (2008)
- EntreReVs
- Mirella Machancoses (2017)
- Feria del Dragón dossier (2025)
- Lágrimas de la Tormenta
- Robota
- Chains LARP
- NotOnlyLarp
- Efimeral Events
- Universidad de Granada — thesis (2024)
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