Garanhuns Winter Festival

Garanhuns turns its unusually cool highland climate, a rarity for Pernambuco's Northeast, into the premise for FIG, the Festival de Inverno de Garanhuns, a July music festival centered on Praca Mestre Dominguinhos that mixes forro, MPB and rock with free daytime cultural workshops. Running since the early 1990s, it has grown into one of Brazil's largest winter festivals.

Garanhuns sits at roughly 800 meters in Pernambuco's highlands, cool enough in July that locals call the area the Suica Pernambucana, Pernambuco's Switzerland, and that unusual climate for northeastern Brazil is the whole premise behind FIG, the Festival de Inverno de Garanhuns, launched in the early 1990s as a way to draw visitors during the region's coldest weeks.