Festival Ritmo Cuba

What separates this from a resort week is that it does not keep you inside. Days include dance tours around Havana, the nights move out to the city's salsa clubs rather than staying in a function room, and there is a beach party the organisers treat as the centrepiece rather than an extra. You end up in Havana rather than in a hotel that happens to be in Havana. The teaching is unusually deep for a festival aimed at visitors: more than sixty teachers, among them the principal instructors from each of the major salsa schools in the city, with over a hundred hours of classes and three rooms running at any one time. Maykel Fonts, Adonis Santiago, Jorge Luna, Karelia Despaigne and Yoerlis Brunet have all taught here. Live bands and nightly shows sit alongside the classes. Cuban assistants dance alongside the workshops so the numbers stay even, which attendees mention more than anything else. Coming alone does not mean sitting out. It has run since 2015 and is organised from Barcelona and Havana by Silvia Canals, with La Casona del Son and Barclay Languages Center behind it. Both also offer Spanish lessons and private classes for anyone extending the trip either side of the festival, which is worth knowing if you are flying that far. Passes are sold for the full seven days or for the Friday-to-Sunday weekend, with or without rooms at the hotel. The weekend option matters more than it sounds: it turns a week in Havana into a long weekend, which is a different trip and a different price.