Fun for this year

There are lot of strange fiestas in Spain. Every now and then I'll see some article or read a report about this or that event where everyone throws paint at a man dressed as a clown/harlequin for either attempting to steal/failing to steal a religious icon in Guadix and Baeza (Cascamorras), where a man, also dressed as a clown/harlequin, jumps over babies each Corpus Christi in Castrillo de Murcia, in Burgos (El Colacho), where devils capture saints with the intention of burning then to death if they are not sidetracked into climbing onto the balconies of fair maidens with rape in their minds (La Santantonà in Forcall), where six open coffins, with live occupants, are paraded around a church and its cemetery to musical accompaniment in Las Nieves, Galicia (Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme) or where giant puppets, skeletons and knights Templar parade through the torchlit streets of Soria (Las Ánimas). Once upon a time any list of odd festivals would include the takeover of the town of Ibi and the resulting egg, flour and firework fight (els Farinats) but Health and Safety has turned that into a shadow of its former self.  There are tens if not hundreds more but even I can recognise when a list is getting too long.

Nonetheless, if I come across some fiesta that sounds promising, even if it's kilometres away, I'll log it away in my diary with a note to myself to check out the dates and details closer to the time. My hope is that there'll be something a bit different to take snaps of. The trouble is that I've done most within spitting distance and there is a certain reluctance on behalf of my long suffering partner to spend a fortune on a couple of nights away to see the symbolic bear hunt at La Vijanera in Silió in Cantabria or to see people rafting down the river in Nargó in Lleida. Anyway the years are taking their toll and I'm getting too old or too lazy to drive off to the far corners of Spain to fight crowds of young men to get an out of focus photo of some pagan ritual hijacked by the Catholic Church.

January is a good time for fiestas. Lots of the San Antón festivals are pretty lively and usually involve animals and/or fire. One I went to last year in Vilanova d'Alcolea was a real hoot. It was described as a perfect symbiosis between animals and fire and there was mention of a procession, with horses, passing through all the town's streets, jumping over bonfires along the route. What the description didn't say was that those horses drove the crowd before them in narrow streets ablaze with brushwood in a scene as infernal as any ever envisioned in a doom painting with souls cast into the fiery pit of Hell. At one point I was quite convinced I was going to die in flames. Quite a few of the local San Antón events are much gentler though.

Anyway my diary said I should check an event in Piornal. I had no idea where Piornal was though it turns out that it's in Extremadura, in Caceres, which is a long way from Culebrón. I didn't know what it was about, nor when it was, it's on January 19th and 20th this year and as I'm already booked up for those dates I thought I'd let you know so you could pop over there yourself and maybe get involved if you fancied it.

The fiesta is called Jarramplas and it represents the punishment of a cattle thief who is being driven out of the village. Jarramplas is the name of the character, a man dressed in a coat covered in multi-coloured ribbons, so that he looks like he's wearing one of those rag carpets that were still common in my youth. He wears a conical full face mask with a big nose and two horns sprout from the mask. He parades through the town beating a small drum and people throw things at him; in the past it was any old vegetable but, nowadays, they pelt him with turnips, well small root vegetable called nabos actually. No doubt thanks to the nanny state the 21st Century costume conceals a steel armour undergarment to ensure that Jarramplas isn't killed. You'd think they'd have trouble finding people to take on the role but there are, apparently, enough people willing to brave the volleys of turnips till 2048. Obviously, being Spain, there's a saint, Sebastian, linked to this festival and as well as turnip heaving there are lots of other events in the two days from Saint dressing and foot kissing to a communal meal of migas (we are in Extremadura after all).

No, seriously, Spain really is full of colourful and interesting fiestas and it doesn't take much hunting to find something well worth gawping at. Nearly all the local town halls have Facebook pages where they publicise their fiestas. Now I'm feeling a bit better I'm going to get back into it and see if I can't find something new and fun to point my camera at.