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They are instruments that allow us to organise our daily activities and are absolutely indispensable in the increasingly fast world in which we live. They're watches and clocks, the stars of the 13th Catalonia Watch and Clock Fair at Sant Feliu de Codines (Vallès Oriental) this Sunday, 18 May.

Whilst last year's fair focused on mystery clocks and watches (i.e. clocks and watches which work in a way that is hard to explain), this year's event goes back to the very beginning and looks at elemental clocks, clocks based on the four universal elements, as the Ancients saw them: water, air, fire and earth.

At the 'Elemental Clock and the Measurement of Time' exhibition, visitors will be able to see water clocks, sundials, sand clocks, and oil clocks, incense… The exhibition opens on Saturday, followed the next day by a bric-a-brac market, with the traditional stalls selling clocks and watches in and around the town's Plaça del Rellotge.

This year's Catalonia Watch and Clock Fair aims to show visitors instruments for measuring time that preceded mechanical clocks, which appeared in the first half of the 14th century and that were perfected in the modern era with the introduction of the pendulum (thanks to discoveries by the physicists Galileo and Christiaan Huygens).

More recent times, during the 20th century, have seen the invention of two devises of extraordinary precision: the quartz clock and the atomic clock.