Barcelona Tattoo Expo is one of the largest and longest-running European tattoo conventions. HeartbeatInk Tattoo Magazine has been collaborating with the famous festival for the third consecutive year and recorded its pulse.
This year, Barcelona Tattoo Expo completed twenty-one years of successful organization and brought together over 18.000 visitors. The tattoo convention was once again hosted in the splendid and spacious Fira in Barcelona's Plaça d'Espanya on Friday the 5th, Saturday the 6th and Sunday the 8th of October. Over 300 tattoo artists from 32 different countries gave more than 1.000 tattoos during the convention, most of which were large pieces.
At the same time, BAUM FEST (Barcelona Art & Urban Movement), a festival devoted to street art and urban culture; extreme sports, custom bikes, vintage cars, concerts, shibari bondage show, breaking BBoy Battle, allstyles BMX championship, inLine, skate and graffiti exhibition. Of course, there were also the "Best of the Day" contests for the best tattoo of each day.
Among all these activities and shows, the philanthropic action of the festival was also present, with the "Tatuadores por la Paz" initiative. In the meantime, € 3.600 euros were gathered, thanks to the tattooists who helped the cause, along with Jordi Wild. The amount gathered was given to NGO "Por una sonrisa I give everything", which will strengthen the new humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees in Tripoli, Lebanon.
We would like to thank the organizers Mik, Mao and Laura for their excellent collaboration, love and respect.
Text by Ino Mei.
Photos by John McCaughey / Spot the Spirit.
