Repeating history and a traditional snack

The Santa Catalina district of Pinoso is probably the most "Spanish" part of the town. To we Brits she's Saint Catherine, the one that the spinning fireworks are named for. Not surprisingly the neighbourhood that bears her name celebrates her feast day and, over the years, the festival has become quite a big event in the town.

The feast day proper centres on hogueras or bonfires that are set up on nearly every street corner. I've mentioned Sana Catalina in not one, or two but three blog entries over the past five years. We missed the bonfires this time because we were out of town.

A new departure for the fiesta this year is that there is a Mediaeval Market. We've just been up there to have a nose. It was pretty quiet to be honest. The stallholders were blaming the football and the cold in equal measure. I'm with the ones who thought it was too cold to venture out. The temperature difference between Culebrón, 600m above sea level, and coastal Cartagena is very noticeable. I think it's perishing.

There was a stall that caught my eye though. A beer stall. Yakka beers. There was just a drop of deja vu here because the last time we went to one of these markets was for the Romans and Carthaginians festival in Cartagena. There I bumped into a micro brewery beer called Icue. So, in the perishing cold and speaking abominable Spanish to the bearded, alternative lifestyle looking, stall holder I found out that there's now a microbrewery just down the road from us here in Culebrón. I tried the wheat beer (bit fruity for my taste) and brought home a bottle of stout.

The stout went very nicely with some local cheese that Maggie bought whilst I was sampling the beer but even more so with some Stilton that we picked up in a Pinoso supermarket today. That's the first time I've ever seen Stilton in Spain, the first Stilton I've tasted for over seven years. Stilton and stout. It sounds so Dickensian.

It tasted yummy.