There's a mental image that we at the Raluy Historical Circus still share when someone asks about the most distant adventure the company has ever undertaken: thirty-two wooden wagons, hand-painted and laden with European history, unloaded from a ship in the port of Buenos Aires. It was the end of 1999. A few weeks later, in January 2000, that journey had resulted in two Argentine awards: the Mar del Plata Sea Star and the Faro de Oro National Award.
A conversation at the Girona Fairs
The tour didn't stem from an expansion plan or market research. It came from a conversation. In October 1999, during the first performance of what was then the Raluy Circus Museum at the Girona Fairs, Carlos Raluy reconnected with his cousin Sergio Rodríguez Raluy, a tenor living in Buenos Aires. From that reunion emerged an idea that in any other company would have remained just a casual conversation: to cross the Atlantic with the entire circus. Carlos, true to the phrase he repeated whenever someone told him something was impossible—"the most difficult thing yet"—set it in motion.
Crossing the Atlantic with a traveling circus isn't just crossing the Atlantic with a show. It's moving a whole town. The company loaded its rolling assets in Barcelona bound for Buenos Aires and pitched its tent in Mar del Plata, on the grounds at the corner of Martínez de Hoz Avenue and Juan B. Justo Avenue. The newspaper La Nación covered the arrival on January 26, 2000 , and recorded the numbers: fifty artists and technicians from nine different countries and a company that, according to the newspaper itself, was unprecedented in Latin America. For the Argentine public, this wasn't just another summer season performance: it was an experience unlike anything the country had ever seen.
What is a Starfish
It's worth explaining the significance of what happened next, because outside of Argentina the award's name means little. The Estrella de Mar awards were created by the Mar del Plata Municipal Tourism Board—now the Municipal Tourism Authority—which in the early 1970s observed that theater, café-concerts, and circuses drew as many audiences to the city as the casino. The first ceremony was held in 1975, and since then, the awards have recognized the best of Mar del Plata's summer season each year. And the Mar del Plata season is not just any local program: it's the grand showcase of Argentine entertainment, the place where the country's theatrical and musical offerings converge in just a few weeks. Receiving a Estrella de Mar award means having excelled precisely there, during the most competitive summer on the continent.
The second recognition that year came from a different source. The Faro de Oro National Award, established in Mar del Plata in 1992, recognizes figures and programs in the world of media, culture, and entertainment. The fact that a European circus company, newly arrived and without a single name familiar to the Argentine public, made it onto both lists in the same season speaks volumes about what was happening under that big top.
What the tour left behind at home
Argentine critics celebrated the arrival of a truly high-caliber European circus, and the company extended its tour to other cities throughout the country during 2000. But the most lasting effect wasn't the applause there, but rather what the tour changed here. The circus returned to Catalonia convinced of what until then had been an intuition: that those wagons, that round red velvet tent, and that repertoire of acrobats, tightrope walkers, and clowns weren't just a spectacle, but a living heritage worth preserving and showcasing. The concept of a circus-museum that defines the company to this day was solidified during that trip.
These two Argentine awards occupy a special place within the set of circus awards : they are the only ones that came from the other side of the ocean, and they arrived when nobody expected them.
Twenty-five years later, the tent is still up every season, and the experience that thrilled Mar del Plata remains the same: real artists, just a few feet away, no screen tricks. Check the tour schedule, book your tickets , and see it live, just like they did.
