Villazgo is the celebration of the independence of Pinoso from nearby Monóvar on 12th February 1826. It's the day for a nostalgia trip in Pinoso. Out come all the traditional costumes, the folk dancers, the regional games - anything vaguely related with the past will do. It's always a good day. We have stalls in the street, we have displays from the neighbourhood associations, the wine producers, local groups of every shade and hue and, probably the best bit, lots of local businesses associated with food and drink set up a stall in the town hall car park. Punters buy a set of tickets which they can swap for wine, cakes and cooked food. A veritable feast.
Today was just a bit different. The local council feels that it needs to try to attract more visitors and one of the ways they thought to do this was to try and be a bit more pushy about the town's identity. So they've invested 46,000€ in some signs, flower beds and information boards. They spent another 24,000€ on doing up one of the central streets. I'd somehow got hold of the mistaken idea that most of this stuff had been found stashed away, unused, in a storeroom so, if you're one of the people I told that to, I apologise.
The slogan for the identity campaign is the title of the blog. Easy if you're one of the 2.4 million Valenciano speaking tourists. Now if they'd chosen Spanish Spanish, i.e. Castillian, they'd have had 407 million native speakers and goodness knows how many other second languagers. I can see the dilemma though. Anyway my Valencian is up to this. Pinoso, town of marble and wine.P.S.We went back at around 2pm for a spot of lunch and the sun was shining and the town packed to the gunwales.
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