All squishy

There's a certain tendency to euphoria sometimes. It would happen from time to time driving across the fens or maybe with the MGB in the Cotswolds. Just feeling glad to be there, to be passing through. It happens a lot here. As I drive across some Spanish landscape with, maybe, high hills, or never ending plains or, perhaps, just watching that ochre yellow dust trail as a car or van drives along some dirt track I start grinning for no particular reason.

Maybe it's my age but nowadays I've got to the point where small pleasures cheer me up quite as easily as things on a grander scale. Maybe it's always been like that. Lots of the films that I've liked most across my lifetime of cinema going have been the ones that are classed as independent film.

There are lots and lots of celebrations in Spain. They are everywhere if you look. I wonder if they have a more obvious impact in small towns and villages. The centre of Pinoso is more or less closed off for the eight or nine days of the fair and fiesta in August. We were in Bilbao once, at Easter, and a parade was routed down one side of a dual carriageway whilst traffic continued to flow on the other carriageway - the place is simply too big to stop because of an Easter parade. I thought the penitents looked lost and out of place in a way that they don't as they invade the streets of Jumilla or Hellín. Mind you they close a lot of the centre of Valencia to traffic by the Fallas, Alicante for Hogueras and Murcia for the Spring Festival so I could well be wrong.

Lots of the events are religious in basis, Catholic in fact. Not a lot of Divali or Eid celebrations in the streets here. Often, when I say to Maggie, "Do you fancy coming to see the san Antón stuff in Villena?" or "What about going to see the sawdust carpets in Elche de la Sierra for Corpus Christi?," she'll answer "I'm not a Catholic." Well, neither am I but I'm beginning to really like some of the smaller scale, home grown parades and what not. Actually I think that for most Spaniards the events aren't that religious either; they are more cultural or traditional or just theirs.

Pinoso fiestas is full of happenings. Fireworks and folk dancing here, mascletàs and vermouth sessions there and big events like the concerts and the fancy dress parade. And my favourite event? - the flower offering. Old costumes, lots of flowers and heading to the church to lay them at the feet of a carved wooden statue in the church, with the inevitable mass - not that I've ever been to the mass. Strange choice. I know what I think the reason is. I think it's because I'm soppy. It's like that line in Wonderful World about shaking hands. In the ofrenda there are little groups - from the villages and from organisations but there also seem to be family groups and just, well, people. They wave at their pals as they pass, they break rank to say hello, the smiles are enormous. The pleasure is infectious.

I went to see a little procession in Chinorlet last night. Chinorlet is only about 3kms from our house but it belongs to Monóvar rather than to Pinoso. I didn't know which figures were being moved about so I asked Google. The first result was the 1998 fiesta programme. Heaven knows why. It gave me the answer though. Twenty years ago the procession was at the same time on the last Sunday of the fiestas. The billing says Solemn procession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sainted Virgin of the Rosary. Solemn? Well sort of. There were a lot of candles and nice frocks and suits for some of the men alongside a couple of second commandment graven images. The statues are on either wheeled floats or carried on strong shoulders and backs. All through this little village, of fewer than 200 people, there were knots of people sitting on chairs outside their homes, standing around chatting, passing time waiting for the procession. I suppose that "everyone" who has a weekend home in Chinorlet was there over the weekend.

It's a bit odd. I'd decided to write this piece yesterday evening suggesting that this was something about as Spanish as mantillas and peinetas. This morning, on my Facebook feed, there was a photo of a bunch of people loading a carved catholic figure into the back of a decorated pickup truck. I presume that they were setting off on what is called a romeria here in Spain. The photos were from my brother in law from when he passed through Messajanes in Portugal. It reminded me that I've seen those carved virgins making the rounds in the background of lots of Sergio Leone and Robert Rodriguez films. But, who cares about facts? The next time I watch the Virgin of the Assumption heading up the little road to Caballusa or another Virgin trekking from Aspe to Hondón de las Nieves I'll think that I'm watching something as Spanish as it gets and I may well grin.