The story
Feria Bonita in Bucaramanga
Bucaramanga's fair began in 1949 as livestock trading fuelled partly by rural migration following the 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, and later took the name Feria Bonita after the city's ciudad bonita nickname was popularised in the late 1980s. Now centred on the Cenfer exhibition complex, opened in 1995, it spans concerts, craft fairs, pageants, parades and workshops each year.
Bucaramanga's Feria Bonita traces to 1949, when the city's fair began as a livestock buying-and-selling gathering that drew farmers from across Santander department, as well as from southern Cesar and Magdalena Medio, into an undeveloped area next to the Girardot neighbourhood that would later take the name La Feria.