Dancing in the streets

I saw something about the fiestas in Cañadas de Don Ciro this last weekend. Now Don Ciro really is no more than a wide spot on a very rural road but they have fiestas. It reminded me that I hadn't written anything about our own local fiesta which was a couple of weekends ago now. 

The Culebrón fiesta is one of a series for the outlying villages which are part the Pinoso municipality. The first village fiesta takes place in late Spring and they go on through the Summer with the villages taking it in turns to have a weekend of festivities. The fiestas are not usually particularly exciting or expansive but they are deeply ingrained in local culture and they offer the villagers a break from the routine with a chance to have a bit of a natter with friends, family and neighbours against the backdrop of some planned activities.

There are usually two key themes. One is religious. Nearly all the fiestas are tied in to the patron saint for the village. The saintly effigies usually get an outing. Sometimes the saints stay away from home for days and sometimes they just get a quick tour of the village. There are as many variations as saints.

The other theme is eating, well eating and drinking. Most of the Pinoso villages have a sit down evening meal. Occasionally the meals are classy with ceramic plates and decent cutlery but usually it's plastic plates and glasses with mass catered food. The quality of the meal is importantish, it's always a topic of conversation afterward, but really it's the sitting and chatting and drinking and laughing that matters.

The dinners used to be followed by showband type bands, orquestras playing paso dobles and jotas. As budgets shrank, in the smaller villages, so did the number of musicians and nowadays it's often a playlist and a laptop. Mind you people have been complaining that the Motomami tour by Rosalía doesn't have any live musicians either!

The activities to go with the feasting, drinking, dancing and religious observance can be legion. Traditional games are very usual. In this area something, a bit like horseshoes, called tanganilla or caliche, is common, a cooking competition (traditionally for men) making gachamiga (a sort of garlic pancake) is standard issue too, maybe a communal picnic, vermouth sessions, foam machines, water slides or bouncy castles for the kids, cake and a drink type sessions - chocolate with churros, horchata with fartons, sometimes basketball or football competitions or even summer cinema. I've seen things as mundane as domino competitions and face painting and as innovatively simple as beer tasting sessions. It all depends a bit on your budget and it all depends a bit on what is considered acceptable in your neck of the woods. 

The activities are a bit academic. Village fiestas are not really about activities. They are about nattering to your neighbour, having a beer or a wine and remembering old so and so alongside the opportunity for a bit of partying.

One of the key figures in organising the village fiestas in the Pinoso area are the pedáneas or pedáneos. Britons tend to describe these people as village mayors or mayoresses but they are more actually the interface between villagers and the local administration. They also represent the village in any number of local functions. So if the street lamp outside your house fails or if you feel the bins are not being emptied properly the idea is that you moan to the representative and they pass on your moans to the town hall. Our village rep is Belgian. She's hard working and organised. She, and her family, seemed to have done most of the work to organise the fiesta. The one area where there were probably other willing helpers was with the organisation of the religious part of the proceedings. 

The programme was similar, but different, to the pre Covid years. On the Friday evening there was a vermouth session - a few litres of vermouth, nuts, crisps, olive and mixers and space to chat. On Saturday there was a market for second hand stuff and for craft stalls and the like. There was nothing for the Saturday afternoon. The evening meal on Saturday evening was organised into tables for friends and family groups rather than the more usual long table free for all. There was nothing on Sunday apart from the all important evening mass and procession followed by the "Wine of Honour" which is a  sort of end of event stand up buffet. 

Looking in, as someone who knows nothing about how things were organised and as someone who is not particularly integrated into the village, it felt as if the fiesta had a different emphasis to past years. It had a more businesslike feel. The timetable was more precise and none of the smaller elements were there - no competitions, no kids games. In fact, mass and procession apart it could have been almost anywhere sunny in Europe. The evening meal for instance was absolutely Spanish but the menu didn't feature anything that might be alien to a Dutch or Scottish diner. Anyone who saw the advertising and wished to could have a stall at the market or a place at the dinner table. That meant there were far more people involved than usual but not, necessarily, villagers. The religious ceremony maintained its village base with almost nobody, except the invited dignitaries and musicians, not having ties to the village.

It was nice to have the fiesta back. 

Once a Catholic

The other day someone commented on one of my photos with a, "Well Spain is a Catholic country isn't it?" I wondered. I mean "England is an Anglican country, isn't it?". I'm English but I'm not Anglican. In fact much to Maggie's amusement I have a piece of paper that says I'm a Wesleyan. Fortunately I won't have to re-sit the entrance exam. The last time I went to an Anglican Church service, a wedding, I found that the Lord's Prayer, the one drummed into me through countless compulsory school assemblies, was no longer current. I hope thy haven't changed Daffodils too or all those violent school beatings will have been for nought.

I'm not really sure how Catholic Spain is. It's absolutely true that, outside a Spanish Parish church just before lunch on a Sunday there will be sizeable crowd but, if what my mum says is true, her Anglican church is a lively place too. Google has the figures of course. The (Spanish) Centre for Sociological Investigation said that, in March 2021 just short of 60% of the Spanish population defined itself as Catholic. The same report said that many of those people were not practising Catholics but only went to church for social occasions. In fact, according to the Spanish equivalent of the UK Office for National Statistics, in October 2021 only 22% of Spaniards went to mass or confession on a regular basis whilst over one third of Spaniards said that they were atheist or agnostic. 

I think that line about social occasions is the key. Although you still see a lot of women in posh frocks and men in very tight suits waiting in ambush, with confetti, outside churches, the number of church weddings is in free-fall. In 2020 only 10% of all Spanish weddings were church ceremonies. The pandemic and same sex weddings help to explain some of that figure but there is an obvious and real drop from the 75% of all weddings in the year 2000 being in church, to just 20% in pre-pandemic 2019 Spain. It's the same with baptisms: from 350,000 in 2010 to 190,000 in 2018. Again a demographic change, lower birth rates, probably exacerbate that figure but the decline is obvious. On the other hand, as you will guess, if you've seen the child sized white "wedding" dresses and sailor suits in the children's clothing shops, or ever tried to get into a restaurant in the run up to Corpus Christi, you'll know that Communions have held up pretty well. The drop there is much less pronounced from around 250,000 in 2009 to 220,000 in 2018. The clue though is in the shocking figure that the median spend on a First Communion is now 3,000€. You'll know where a lot of that money goes if you've ever tried to book a restaurant in the run up to Corpus Christi. First Communions are good for a show of piety, followed by a party as a show of wealth or status.

The difficulty comes in separating social customs from religious customs. Consider the British Poppy Day, Remembrance Day. I don't know what the correct definition of Remembrance Day is but f you were to ask me for some top of the head version I'd say that it's about recognising the service of men and women in the military. I don't think of it as a particularly Christian or Anglican event but I suppose it is. As I remember it the Bishop of London takes over where the sergeant majors leave off. Religious views are often left unspoken but it's clear that not all of the people who have some role at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day, be they hard bitten left wing union leaders or soldiers of the Gurkha regiment, will be Anglicans. Nonetheless they keep their heads down and get on with it. My opinion is that it's exactly similar in Spain. Holy Week, with the processions, with the floats, the tronos, carried on shoulders, with the silent parades as Good Friday starts, with the saetas sung from the balconies is about as Catholic an event as you can imagine but I'm almost certain that not everyone carrying those floats is a card carrying Catholic.

I don't think there's a Spanish public holiday that isn't linked to the Catholic calendar and nearly all of the fiestas are church linked. Schools and Hospitals often have Catholic names. Until very recently Government ministers swore their oaths with one hand on a bible facing a small crucifix. Children were often named for the Saint's day on which they were born. As I write San Antón has passed but San Blas events are under way. The midsummer bonfires in Alicante are San Juan, the fiestas in Pinoso are around the Virgin del Remedio, The Fallas in Valencia are for la Virgen de los Desamparados and even the Christmas running races are named for a saint - San Silvestre. The official name for the National Day, on 12 October, is Día de la Hispanidad but for most it's el Pilar, named for the Virgen del Pilar. Again I suspect that the name is just a vestige of a Catholic tradition. For most people it's just a day to get a nice meal, to head off to the coast or to meet family. Probably most Spaniards know the religious root but consider the days to be essentially secular though, as the saying goes, once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

Getting out and about

I always say that it's a part of my cultural education to get out and about in Spain a bit. Getting out and about has several levels. If you consider that our house is a little island of Britishness then going to a bar and getting a coffee is a journey to Spain. It doesn't really matter whether the out and aboutness is big or small. Memorable things happen on the doorstep just as much as hundreds of kilometres away though, obviously, the reverse is also true!

Out and about can be villages and towns and cities and parks and castles and museums and hills and churches and, even if they fail you, your luck may be better in a restaurant with something that you've never heard of on the menu.

Out and about can be fiestas. Most countries have theatres, cinemas, museums, concerts, coastline, woodland, prehistoric sites and so on and most places have fiestas too. The Tar barl festival in Allendale in Northumberland, the one with the burning tar barrels on the head, is as barmy as anything you'll get in Spain. The big difference seems to be that Spain has these street based fiestas, often with an enormous back story, everywhere and all year round. When Coronavirus becomes just another of those viruses that we live with I'll be trying to persuade Maggie that we should go to see the Cascamorros in Baza and Guadix or the Noche en Vela in Aledo. Who knows we might even get up to Noche de las Animas in Soria or over to Manganeses de la Polvorosa in Zamora now that they've given up on tossing the goat from the church tower. Or maybe that one where they carry people around in coffins, oh, and the one where blokes dressed in rag clothing are pelted with turnips and there are so many with bonfires and demons that I could be kept happy for years. Or maybe just the Moors and Christians in Oliva or Ibi or Petrer will do for now.

One of the problems with digging out places to visit and things to do is that it's not easy to find out about them. Every time we go to Murcia city there seems to be something happening outside the cathedral that I knew nothing about. I wonder why. Much as I dislike it I spend a lot of time grinding through webpage after webpage trying to piece together fragments of information like a second rate Hercule Poirot. 

A good example of making an event as difficult as possible are the heats which will decide Spain's entry in this year's Eurovision Song Contest. If I manage to finish this blog today the first semi-final is this evening. Eurovision is quite a big thing here in Spain. It gets a fair bit of publicity because Spain is one of the "Big 5" - the permanent members of Eurovision along with France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom which means that the Spanish song gets into the final whatever its quality. Having made the investment the state broadcaster does its best to promote the event. Over the past few years Spain's showing in the competition has been abysmal. This year the TV company decided to make more of the process for choosing the song and to try harder to get decent representation. Entering a song was opened up to almost anyone who wanted to give it a crack. From all those entries an expert panel chose fourteen songs to go on to the next stage. There would be two semi final rounds and then a final to choose the Spanish entry. The rounds and the final would be live with an audience. The town they chose for the concerts was Benidorm. 

Now, as Benidorm is only just up the road, I thought we should go and have a look. I don't really care for Eurovision but an event is an event and with this new format I even knew a few of the bands or singers. The spread of styles is pretty impressive. At the last minute one of the acts pulled out because the Eurovision rules don't allow the use of Autotune, and as her song hinged around the robotic voice (a la Cher in Believe), that put paid to her chances. So, from the first moment that Benidorm Fest was mooted I started to look out for tickets. It's a long and tedious story about Covid restrictions and how the tickets were and were not made available. In the end the organisers distributed 500 tickets through a couple of organisations of EuroFans with another bundle handed out on a sort of "old boy" scheme amongst official organisations. No tickets for plebs like us. Maybe we will and maybe we won't watch it on the telly. I'm rooting for Rigoberta Bandini (in the photo), we saw her in Cartagena over the summer but the hot favourite is a song called Terra, a folky type song sung in Galician, by Tanxugueiras.

I think there's another sort of out and aboutness, though Maggie tells me that these are only events in my own distorted imagination. Have you eaten toñas? They look like rounded loaves. Their taste is basically of a sweetened bread. They're pretty typical around here. You'll often get them, served with hot chocolate, at the end of a performance of the local Pinoso group Monte de la Sal. There's a variant to the toña, more usual at Easter time, called a mona. The only difference, as far as I know, is that a mona has a hard boiled egg baked into the crown of the bun. As I did my weekly hunt for events I saw a post from Monóvar town Council reminding people that the toña season was upon us. The post, half denied to me because it was in Valenciano, talked about some tradition of eating monas every Thursday between now and Easter - apparently you need to dance and or sing at the same time. I seem to remember that someone from here in the village told me that in the "olden days," around Pinoso, in the three days after Easter week, people would sally out into the countryside armed with the toñas to do some serious picnicking. 

If you're wondering what this has to do with events you have to do a bit of lateral thinking. Because I've not lived here all my life these things are not just a part of my DNA. If these were British we'd be talking Easter egg hunts, addressing the haggis, getting a pint in the beer tent at the village fete or just setting out some laverbread for the visitors. Keeping a tradition alive. It seems to me that turning up in some field in Yecla at some ungodly hour to watch blokes cook gachamigas (those doughy pancakes made with just water, oil, salt and garlic) or walking alongside the romería, taking the Virgin of the Assumption out to Caballusa from Pinoso, complete with free coca in Casas de Pastor (no, different stuff!!) along the way, is much the same. When we lived over in Salamanca we ate hornazo, a sort of chunky meaty pie. The pie got a big boost in sales on the second Monday after Easter. At some time in the past that was the Monday when the Church let the prostitutes back across the River Agueda into the city after their banishment during Lent. The pie was to celebrate. 

There's a shop in Benidorm that sells hornazo. That's the Benidorm where we won't be going for the Eurovision heats but where a Vicars and Tarts party might seem absolutely appropriate.

Unexpected effort and unexpected success

We are going to have a cut down version of the Pinoso Fiestas next week. Less than usual but much better than nothing. Well done Pinoso!

The various conditions to keep the concert type events safe means that the audience for any events has to be controlled and that involves tickets. Most of the events are free so the tickets are called invitations but, nonetheless, you need to have one in your hand to get to see or hear the event. We've had to get the same sort of thing for months, and nearly years, now at lots of venues but mostly the bookings have been possible online. That wasn't the case for Pinoso. 

As well as the fiesta events next week there was a concert by a local choir yesterday and the town band have a concert today. I got the band tickets by going to their office one afternoon. A bit of a trek but easy enough. I went to ask at the Cultural Centre about the choir concerts at the beginning of the month and I was told I was too early. I tried, unsuccessfully, on two separate occasions later in the month to get the invites. The main problem was that nobody seemed exactly sure when and where I should go to get the tickets. In fact, on the night, there were tickets on the door and the space for the outdoors concert was enormous so it was dead easy to keep our distance. The audience capacity of the venue was much, much greater than the size of the audience.

To get the fiesta tickets I went to the Town Hall at the beginning of last week and I was told they would be available later and that there would be an announcement on one of the various online channels that the Town Hall uses. I saw no announcements but I went back anyway a few days later to find a long queue for tickets. The local mayor and the councillor responsible for fiestas were handing out the tickets. A bit extemporised or what? I waited about 20 minutes and got tickets for two of the three events I wanted. The process was inevitably slow because they were taking names and phone numbers just in case there was a need to follow up after an outbreak. For the tickets for the third event I was told to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow was Friday. On Friday I was told Monday. No queue the second time at least.

This is how it always used to be in Spain. Things having to be done face to face. Often you needed "inside" information to be more successful. Nowadays it's not usually the case. Even in Pinoso I was able to get tickets at least one event, a theatre performance, during the fiestas, online.

Yesterday evening, late, I realised my bank card wasn't in my wallet. Pit of the stomach feeling. I searched high and low. Not a sign. My banking app told me there were no dodgy movements and it was easy to suspend the card using the same app. It seemed though that I needed to phone someone to definitely cancel the card and go to a branch to get another one. I tried the free-phone number to report the loss and got a message to say there was a fault with the number and to try later. The extra stumbling block, after psyching myself up for the call, was most unwelcome. Spanish on the phone still can't be counted amongst my strengths. I went back to the website to check how to cancel and renew lost cards. They had a video. I clicked here. I clicked there. Within seconds the website tells me that I've successfully cancelled the card and a new one is on its way. The process I expected to be difficult, and was the last time I did it, was easy peasy whilst something I'd expect to be a piece of cake, getting a couple of event tickets, took eight visits. 

Such, as they say, is Life in Culebrón.

Making up for lost time

We went to see some street theatre last week. It wasn't good. Blokes talking in funny voices wearing tight trousers and red noses as they tripped over imaginary obstacles. What was good was that it was on.

We couldn't get past the barriers that marked off the performance areas because we hadn't pre-booked our tickets but it didn't matter much as there was a bar beside two of the three spaces we went to and we were able to sit at the bar, non alcohol beer in hand, and half watch the performances. 

If there is still a limitation on the permitted number outside a bar (for ages it was 30% of capacity then 50%, keeping a couple of metres between the tables etc.) it is no longer noticeable. We're all still wearing our masks. I sometimes wonder, as I wash the car down in the local petrol station or tramp across some field looking for cucos, why I'm wearing a mask but I still do. The tea leaves suggest it won't go on much longer. I decided not to add a pack of ten of the FFP2 type masks to my supermarket shop the other day - I'm sure my hoard will see me through. Anyway, I digress. I always do. It's what makes it so easy to maintain a conversation on the video Spanish classes. I'm flitting from one thing to another and the hour is soon gone. 

So, we're in the bar and watching some unfunny clown. There are people all around us. They are greeting friends with hugs. It's warm and sunny and just like Spain as the summer begins to gear up. There is a pretence to mask wearing but lots are below nose and everybody is back to corporal greetings. Actually that's not quite true. There's a code to it. What people do is to tap elbows or bump fists as some sort of neoCovid greeting and that ritual over they then cheek kiss and/or hug. Some people, standing within centimetres of me, keep bumping into my plastic chair. It's a bit annoying. Everybody pays lip service but really, in the common consciousness, the virus has gone away. Even in the health centre the other day, when I went for my second jab, they took my temperature before letting me cross the threshold but forgot to direct me to the hand gel and I forgot too. I alternatively snigger and feel aggrieved as the news story about the ever so naughty young people who've been dancing and drinking at some "illegal" do without masks are followed by shots of politicians dancing and hugging each other after an election victory or back slapping at some meeting in Brussels, Ankara of Medellín. Rules, as always, different for the haves and the have nots.

As everything begins to open up, as the theatre programmes look fuller, as there is more and more advertised music, as some guided walks are happening again I'm back to spending hours looking at the things on offer. I trawl through town hall and tourist office websites and search out websites for this and that annual event. Maybe I'm trying to overcompensate for the things we've missed. There is so much being advertised that Maggie is already getting a bit fed up with my enthusiasms. I do the  - well, whilst we're in Alicante for Axolotes Mexicanos (indie band) we could pop in to the exhibition at the MUBAG (art gallery) and then go on to the English language film at the Kineopolis - and Maggie looks at me,  rolls her eyes and says - or we could sit on the terrace with a nice cool drink.

Dolly Parton "It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen".

We'd wasted the Saturday. We'd tried the new pork pie shop but not much else. In the evening though we were spoiled for choice. There was a choir from Valencia singing Habaneras in the Municipal Gardens and then, an hour later, the selection of the Carnival Queens in the Town Hall Car Park. If we'd thought about it there was no need to rush. Spanish things generally start a bit late, unless you presume they will start late in which case they will start without you. This time though there really were no worries as the councillors listening to the Habaneras were an essential part of the Carnival Queen process. Mind you, somebody keeps a seat for them. Not so for we humble folk.

The car park had been turned into a spectacular setting for the Queens event. A fashion model type runway, a big stage with some giant centrepiece, a couple of big screen tellies and two very competent young women being Eurovision Song Contest style comperes. The stars of the evening were the contestants, the girls for Reina Infantil, the Junior Queen, and the young women for Carnival Queen.

The staging and stage management were equally spectacular. The frocks were very Hollywood, the crowd was appreciative and smiling was the order of the evening. It was intriguing watching the man at the mixing desk pressing his headphones hard to his  ears, presumably listening for the OK from lights and sound, before giving the nod to the handler at the start of the runway to let the participants walk. No real losers either. The ones who miss out on the title form the court and go to all the same events, they just don't get the title.

Amongst the complaints levelled against the current and recently victorious, PSOE, administration is one that it's good at fiestas and gardens and not good at the things that count like road repair and rubbish removal. I don't agree but I've heard it lots of times. Equally I've heard the explanation that fiesta spending has actually decreased during their time. I've never inspected the accounts closely but I think that's perfectly possible in that some events (a big concert with a big name Spanish star last year for instance) probably run at a profit, there are always low cost events and whilst there are some that look very flash they are often very participative and cheapish to mount.

As I remember it, before we got this Socialist administration, the opening speeches for the annual fiesta involved the Mayor, flanked by the Carnival Queens and the appropriate councillors, introducing the guest speaker, the Pregónera/o, who addressed the crowd from the balcony and then declared the fiestas open. It's an obvious way to do it. They do it more or less like that for Blackpool Illuminations. But, as soon as the socialists took over it all moved to ground level (I like to think it was a political gesture but it may have been simple logistics). There was a little dais but it was only so the key participants could be seen above the heads of the crowd. There was a big TV screen and the town's press people had made a short promotional video about the town and fiestas. The Carnival Queens and their Court were escorted into the square on the arms of local personalities through a corridor of past Carnival Queens and Fiesta Committee Members. There was lots of music, lots of fanfares and clapping and then it was back to the guest speaker to eventually do the bit they needed to do. The big difference was that it was participative. The event was conjured almost from fresh air with existing resources used to the full.

The do on Saturday followed basically that same pattern. True there was acres of staging and dancers and lots of lights but I suspect that a lot of the outlay was borne by the participants not by we ratepayers. Of course there's a downside to that. Just as any US Citizen can be President of the USA, as long as they can raise the finance I suppose any young woman can aspire to Carnival Queen provided they can afford the gala dresses and the traditional costumes. It can't be an inexpensive undertaking looking at those frocks. Cheaper than being President though - Hilary's campaign cost about $1,400,000,000 and Trump's about $957,600,000.

There are a bundle of photos in the June album

Getting down

Spain is full of fiestas. Fiesta is an idea that we foreigners living here begin to get a glimmer of but which most of us never quite understand fully. It's not just a street party or a carnival. A proper fiesta is based on traditions, sometimes traditions based on beliefs. Fiestas are a collective expression of a community; it's not about somebody organising something and other people watching. Fiestas are commonplace, often nearly ignored by locals yet usually loaded with symbolism in the clothes, dances, music, songs or other manifestations such as language and bonfires. Recognising, and altering, those symbols is something often passed from generation to generation. Fiestas are periodic and repetitive - with the same basic things happening year after year.

There are, within towns and cities, fiestas and fiestas. Some are only fiestas in name because they were designed by tourist boards or trade associations. They don't fit the spirit of the definition above. They can be big, they can be enormous, but they do not, necessarily, represent the spirit of a community. You'd have to ask a local to be sure but I think that, for instance, San Juan in Alicante is one of those seminal fiestas. If you go and watch the parade it's impressive but the real San Juan is not in watching - it's in participating. In getting into a barraca and eating, drinking and dancing with your friends, in sitting around a bonfire with people you met at school etc. It's one of the reasons I like the Easter celebrations in Spain - the Church may think they're religious events but I think that they are much more an expression of a community. Here in Pinoso I think Santa Catalina is like that, in Valencia the Fallas and in Ciudad Rodrigo the encierro at Carnaval. There are thousands of others. I should say that in these days of mass tourism some of the fiestas may lose some of the spirit of that description. I know a couple of Valencianos who think that Fallas is just one huge commercial inconvenience nowadays aimed at tourists. The Wine Horses in Caravaca struck me as one enormous booze up and people have said the same about the Bando de la Huerta in Murcia.

In fact it was to the Bando de la Huerta that we went yesterday. A bando is usually the sort of thing that the town crier reads out, a proclamation. Town Halls here still pin bandos to their noticeboards. As an example in December last year the town of Yecla issued a bando banning the collection of wild plants, like holly and ivy, connected with Christmas. In this particular case, so Wikipedia tells me, the bando is a programme, often with a critical political message, for the fiesta written in verse. Huerta is the key word here though. The dictionary definition I knew, before living in Murcia, was market garden but it's a lot wider than that - it means the fertile, irrigated land of Murcia (and Valencia). It's the countryside, the agricultural land.  From that quick look at Wikipedia it seems that the Bando was originally a festival organised by rich people to mock the peasants in the countryside with their funny habits and clothes but, nowadays, it's a celebration of the traditions and customs of the countryside and the wealth and harvests that it produces.

We've been around this area for ages and it's the first time that we've been free to go. We didn't stay long and we didn't participate. We just watched some of the parade and we were even a bit late in arriving to see all of that. Apparently Pinoso had a group in the parade and we missed them for instance. One of the reasons we were a bit late was that we couldn't find anywhere to park. The city centre was closed off, cars were parked, and double parked, everywhere. Obviously everyone wanted to get in on the act. Outside all of the bars there were piles and piles of men and women drinking and talking and wearing waistcoats and "traditional" dress. Very odd to see young men with modern haircuts, piercings and tattoos consulting their mobile phones, beer in hand, wearing zaragüelles, a type of big, baggy, white boxer shorts and often alpargatas, the shoes we Brits call espadrilles. In a way that's where the fiesta was. In just the same way that it was in the Floridablanca gardens where a barraca, a sort of temporary HQ set up by a peña, one of the neighbourhood or interest groups that participate in the fiestas, was in full swing and oblivious to the passing parade as they served traditional and typical Murcian food and where there would be folk music, displays of bygone days and the like. We could see the fiesta around us, everywhere but we didn't really get involved.

Just to say that the Wikipedia article about the Bando is about 10 pages of A4 long so there is lots more to know about this event if you're interested. Bear in mind too that the Bando is just one of several events happening in Murcia this week as a part of the Spring Festival.

Fiestas de la Virgen in Yecla

You may have seen my snaps of blokes in bicorne hats shooting off arquebuses (old fashioned musket type rifles) in the streets of Yecla. If you haven't, and you want to, there is a tab at the top of this page for my photo albums. The one you want is December 2018. You may wonder why.

Well, basically, in 1642 during The War of Cataluña 61 soldiers from Yecla, under the command of a Captain Soriano Zaplana, went off to fight in line with some treaty signed with a Catalan noble. The Yeclanos were in Cataluña for six months but they were never called on to fight. They all got back to Yecla safe and sound. They were well pleased so they went up to the Castle in Yecla, did a lot of praying and suchlike and then took a picture of Our Lady of the Incarnation, known as the Virgin of the Castle, down  to the town where she stayed in a church for a few days so that people could do even more praying and genuflecting. As the soldiers carried the picture down the hill to the town they shot off their guns Hezbollah or Hamas style. That was the start of the tradition. The Virgin in procession with lots of men shooting off guns. That's what you can still see today.

The celebrations were a bit of a movable feast at first but in 1691 a group called the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception was formed and, as a result, the town adopted that particular version of the Virgin Mary as their patron saint. The brotherhood commissioned a statue and when she was finished, in 1695, she replaced the original picture, from the castle, in the processions.

There was a bit of a blip in the celebrations in the late 1700s because of a fifteen year nationwide ban on the use of gunpowder. The Yeclanos kept asking for their fietas to be exempt and in 1786, Carlos III granted that concession. The guns, silenced for 15 years, took to the streets of Yecla again. The regulations for the revitalised fiestas, written in that year, remained in use right through to 1986. I presume that the style of the suits worn by the soldiers date from that time too.

There was another blip in 1936 when the Republicans set fire to lots of churches and burned lots of religious statues amongst them the 1695 Virgin. The one that gets an outing nowadays is a copy of the original. It was carved by Miguel Torregrosa in the 1950s and given a Papal blessing in 1954.

To be honest I'm not quite sure about all the details of the celebrations. It's a very male festival, and women are notable by their absence. Things like flag kissing and even flag waving are reasonably obvious but there are also children, referred to as pages, who have some part in the festival which I don't quite understand. The web in general and Wikipedia in particular has not helped. The key part though is that there are sixteen groups of soldiers (plus a couple on non aligned groups), each led by a Mayordomo, which dress up in those 18th Century clothes and process through the streets of Yecla shooting off their guns as they escort the Virgin from one place to another.

Should you ever decide to go you will need ear plugs. It is very, very loud.

The pedanía at play

Each of the little villages associated with the small town of Pinoso, the pedanías, have a weekend fiesta sometime over the summer. It's the turn of Culebrón this weekend. It's happening now.

So far we haven't been to anything that's been put on at this year's fiesta and I suspect that we won't be going over for the rest of the event tomorrow. To be honest the programme isn't that important, it's more the idea that the village is as full as it ever gets, that people are around and that they do things together with a lot of laughing as a part of the recipe. In the past the event had a sort of curtain raiser in a meal organised by the Neighbourhood Association the weekend before but that hasn't happened twice in a row now, possibly because of differences of opinion between a couple of key village personalities. As I haven't rejoined the Association this year I wouldn't be able to attend even if it had happened!

People who have a "weekend home" in the village will use it this weekend if they ever do. When the football competition was on I'm sure some of the spectators had time for a chat and maybe a beer. Whilst the children were served cake with chocolate the adults probably chatted and sat around, maybe with a beer. I've only glanced at the programme for this year but it hasn't changed much over the past few years. The big events are the meal on the Saturday and the mass and procession on the Sunday where the figures of San Jaime and San José are paraded around the village. Since 2013 there has also been a walking and running race that attracts a lot of competitors and fills the village in a way that doesn't happen on any other day of the year.

I can hear the after dinner music now, as I type. We would usually be there but the last couple of times it has all been a bit lacklustre and we have had our incomer status emphasised in various and subtle ways.

I was very clear to Maggie that I didn't want to go but she thought we should. Her argument centred around the fact that we live here. So, at the last minute, and way past the closing date for reserving a place, Maggie made an effort to book us in for the meal. She phoned, texted and sent another message but the pedánea, a sort of village mayoress didn't reply.

See you in the usual place

I bought a book, second hand, from the Spanish Amazon site. The book is in Spanish but it was sold by a bookseller in the US, I think. It's called Plazas de España, Squares of Spain. I was rather expecting a version of a treatise on the architecture, development and use of the public square in Spain suitably dumbed down for a plebeian audience. It had a bit of that, in the introductory pages, but the bulk of the book is a selection of photos of some of the more impressive squares with one of those factual and instantly forgettable descriptions. "This square, built in a Rococo style with Neoclassical additions ordered by Carlos III, is one of the most ornate of all Spanish squares." It reminded me of some of the terrible guided visits we've been on - to your left a crucifix from 1752 inspired by Michael Angelo and, over the fireplace, a scene from the Battle of Lepanto painted by Plácido Francés y Pascual in 1871 - now if you'd follow me we'll move on to the onyx fireplace.

I looked at the pictures in the book, read the captions and parked it on the bookshelf next to James Herriot's Yorkshire so that it could get on with it's predestined role of collecting a thick layer of dust.

Squares though are very common here. In the same way that the UK is strewn with lovely green spaces and parks, places to play football or cricket, listen to the band or buy an ice cream Spain is littered with squares. Places to watch the world go by, places to meet people, the place for the weekly market, the annual fiesta, the outlet sale or the book fair. Spanish squares are open, public, spaces woven into the everyday life of most Spanish towns.

I know that there are squares all over the world. Trafalgar and Leicester Squares came to mind instantly. Not far behind I remembered Times, Red and Tienanmen and that enormous Zócalo in Mexico City. Come to think of it the car park behind the public baths in Elland, where I grew up, was called the Town Hall Square. But I think there is a difference. It's the way that the Spanish Plazas Mayores, whatever their name, are an everyday, a constant in Spanish life and not just a gathering point for pickpockets, nor for kissing strangers on New Year's Eve, to give your Easter blessing or to parade those ever so green shiny missiles.

The Spanish Plaza Mayor, the main square, the principal square is where you need to head to if you are looking for the old centre of town. The Town Hall is almost certainly there, partly due to an edict from the Catholic Monarchs in 1480, the ones who sponsored Columbus to go West. It's where the SatNav will take you if you give it nothing to work on except for the town name. If you don't have a TomTom or whatever the main square can be pinpointed by looking for the church tower. It'll probably be just next door. Civil and ecclesiastical power are usually close by in Spain.

I managed to cock up our going to the homage to Julian Bream concert in the Petrer Guitar Festival yesterday evening so I suggested we go and have a look at the Moors and Christians in Hondon de las Nieves instead. We didn't know quite where the parade would start but we headed for the square by the Town Hall, the Plaza de la Villa, and there it was.

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I've just realised that I wrote this same blog back in March. I bought the book because of the programme. But if I didn't remember then probably you didn't either and anyway you've read it all now so no going back!

The smell of burning in the morning

A faint aroma of woodsmoke accompanied me to the shower this morning. Presumably a sensorial reminder of a short stroll along the beach in Alicante last night amongst the tens of impromptu mini bonfires, or hogueras, there. One of those essential, but detail, elements of celebrating San Juan, St John the Baptist, in any number of coastal Alicantino towns.

Strange stuff around midsummer; midsummer day on the 24th of June, the midsummer of Puck, Bottom, Oberon and Titania. How is it that summer begins, the summer solstice is on the 21st, and then a couple of days later it's midsummer? Lots of Spanish people say that Midsummer Night is the most special night of the year. I like it too. Something special about the long day, the short night and the promise of night-time warmth in the name alone. In Cartagena I remember that every street corner had some group of family and friends setting fire to something or hurling bangers around. In a slightly more restrained Lincolnshire I have this, possibly invented, memory of seeing The Dream at Tolethorpe on a balmy summer's evening - no rain, no wind, no chill in the air. Real or not it's the memory of Tolethorpe and their outside Shakespeare season that doesn't fade.

Maggie couldn't go to the San Juan shindig in Alicante yesterday. She'd agreed to work. She says that she's seen it anyway, that it's always the same. A few bigheads and giants here, a parade or two there, a bit of dancing, a lot of bangers - been there, seen that, done it. I agree, to a point. I was very uncertain about going for the physical effort of it and for the cost. I have similar thoughts about cities sometimes very similar to Maggie and her repeat fiestas. What was that cathedral in that city we went to with the yellow trams called? What was the name of that resort for rich people in Sardinia? Questions without answers. It's not quite the same when it's somewhere a tad more exotic. Not a lot of pyramids and desert tombs or monkeys running around Buddhist temples in Europe.

What I actually like about San Juan down, particularly the Alicante city version, doesn't have a lot to do with people dancing in the street. It's more the whole motion of it. Nice and warm, sunny, with all the bars and restaurants doing a lively trade and the whole city bedecked, with something going on at any moment everywhere, with people in traditional costume having a chat with someone in sports gear, with main roads reduced to litter strewn playgrounds for young and old alike. I met up with my sister and brother in law to do the things on the event list. As we left the mascletá, the fireworks that go boom boom, it took us ages to get out of Lucernos Square simply because of the weight of humanity trying to move. I left early in the evening around midnight. I'd been there for about twelve hours and my feet were aching and my contact lenses were beginning to play up. As I started to go home there was absolutely no doubt that the city was beginning to fill up. There were queues of cars all along the seafront, the huge car park underneath yet alongside the beach and port was completely full. Walking back to my car there were prams snapping at my heels and masses of people going in every direction. Amongst the trees of a seafront park, there were score and scores of family and friendship groups dotted about. When I finally arrived at the car park that I'd used (on price) a little way out of town it was a hive of activity with cars coming and going and a long queue of people at the, cash only, ticket machine (who weren't amused that my crumpled 5 euro note was repeatedly rejected). As I drove away, at around 12.30am, I passed one of the, soon to be burned, "monuments" maybe a couple of kilometres from the centre of the town and there must have been a thousand people eating grouped around it on hundreds of long tables.

Too much of a good thing

When I turned up for work this morning there was nobody there. The school was closed. Nobody bothered to tell me but it gave me the surprise bonus of being able to get to the Wine Horse Festival, Caballos del Vino, in Caravaca de la Cruz. There are all sorts of Fiestas but if we agree that a Fiesta is some sort of street based celebration open to the general public then I have been to a lot of fiesta type events recently. More specifically in the last week or so. A bit back there was Easter where we saw various processions in Pinoso, Tobarra and in Murcia. Then we went to the Moors and Christians in Banyeres de Mariola, the Romeria to San Pancracio in Sax and more Moors and Christians in Onil.

Easter in Spain I described a few posts ago so I'll skip straight to Moors and Christians which is loosely based on the triumph of the Christians over the North African invaders/rulers. In most places, as the name suggests, there are two main bands; The Moors, the North Africans, and the Christians, the eventually successful Spaniards. Generally the Moors get the better costumes. Sometimes there are Smugglers and sometimes Students. I don't know why and I'm too lazy to find out. Moors and Christians vary a lot. Sometimes there are big floats and lots of camels and horses. In other places the various troops march shoulder to shoulder keeping strict time to the music. We've seen one, I forget where, where the costumes included 18th Century soldiers uniform for lots of the participating groups. In the two and a half I've seen in the last few days the various groups haven't been particularly marshall. Some of them have vaguely marched, kept in step, but many more have simply gone for a stroll with a drink, usually a spirit and mixer, in hand. The strollers have been supported by members of the same group firing off arquebuses - those old fashioned blunderbuss type guns.

The Wine Horses is tied in to the Moors and Christians in a way. The usual story is that when the Castle of Caravaca de la Cruz was besieged by the Moors, in around 1250, the defenders ran out of water when their cisterns were exhausted. A group of Knights Templar loaded up some fast horses with wine skins and sped into the castle taking the besiegers by surprise and relieving the defender's thirsts. There are lots of events to make up the festival but the biggest one, up for World Heritage status, is a vague re-enactment of the Templar charge with four blokes, all men as I could see, running alongside an impeccably turned out horse wearing a fancy decorated coat, taking turns to do timed runs up the approach ramp to the castle. There are thousands, and I mean thousands of people on the approach ramp and lots of them have been drinking for a long time by the time the horses start to run. The crowd parts to let the horses through, well that's the idea any way. One bloke hauled me out of the way as I tried, vainly, to get a photo that wasn't too blurred and so badly framed as to be useless. He was quite cross with me. "It might have run you down," he kept saying to the degree that, eventually, I pointed out that it hadn't though. People bumping into me as they fled the horses made it difficult enough to take snaps without somebody saving me as well!

I have to say that the one I probably liked best though was the Romeria. This is the one where some statue of a Saint or a Virgin gets taken from one church to another little church. Sometimes the statues go in carts but usually they go on the backs of the faithful. The last couple we've been to have involved the carrying part followed by a Catholic mass but most people seem to just take it as an opportunity to go for a picnic in the countryside. Lots and lots, and I mean lots, wandering along dusty tracks hauling cool boxes and picnic tables just seems so Spanish and a great way to pass a day.

With a bit of luck though we won't have the opportunity to get to any more fiestas in the next couple of weeks. You can have too much of a good thing.

Looking for an epiphany

We've been to see a few Easter parades these last few days. When I was a schoolboy Mr Kemp and Mr Edwards, my Junior and Secondary school headteachers, were keen that I was given a good Christian Education. Whether I asked for it or not they made sure that I got it. Although I haven't really looked at a Bible or happily gone inside a church for well over forty years I still remember the basics of, for instance, the Christmas and Easter stories. At times it's not enough. So when I saw a float in a parade with the title of Aparicion de los Discípulos de Emaus or The Appearance to the Disciples at Emmaus it meant nothing to me. Fortunately other teachers tried hard to persuade me that finding things out and knowing how to find things out was easily as important as actually knowing things. It's much easier now than it used to be. Google knew. Emmaus or Emaus is one of those early Resurrection sightings.

In the same way that I have a well grounded but essentially partial grasp of Christian lore I have a reasonably good handle on Spain. I know a bit of history, a bit of culture, some politics and more. I keep trying to add to my knowledge. My sieve like brain is a perfidious ally in this attempt to learn and those funny foreign names don't help either but sheer persistence has worked for me in the past and I see no reason why it isn't a workable plan for, at least, the near future.

The last Easter float had passed us by. As we walked away the chair hire companies were loading their plastic seats into the back of myriad vans and the road sweeping machines were pirouetting around the streets which moments before had buzzed with spectators. As we neared our parked car we saw that there was something going on in the park, el Malecón, by the river. We've seen fairs and markets there before so we went for a nosey.

There were a bunch of temporary restaurants. They were busy. Most were called Peña this and that. Now peña is probably a word that I don't understand. Or maybe it's a word I understand perfectly. It seems to be a multi-use word - all peña usually means is that it's a group of like minded souls - Peña Madrileña for Real Madrid fans. It seems too that peñas can either be very open groups or quite closed groups. I've heard peña used to describe the garage hired by a bunch of mates during a town carnival to drink beer and hang around in. Often, within fiestas, there are peñas which are set up by associations of one kind or another. Your neighbourhood may be going to do some things in a town fête so the neighbourhood sets up a temporary HQ in an unrented shop. They call it a peña and it becomes a sort of social centre for anybody who has affiliations to that neighbourhood. Some peñas seem to be more permanent than others.

Anyway, so we've diverted to have a look in the park and we find all these restaurants and they are all called Peña this and that. We have no idea whether they are something to do with the Spring Festival, which always follows on from Easter in Murcia, or whether they are tied in to the Holy Week celebrations. We have no idea but hundreds and hundreds of people do, they are having their lunch there. Some of the peñas have price lists, most are completely full. We don't know if it's a walk in proposition, whether we need a reservation or if it's a members only deal. It doesn't matter. It's not as though we want to eat. We've already eaten in a bar in town. The reason we are interested is simply because we don't know what's going on. We are quietly and individually distressed. It's discomforting simply because we don't understand. It's another Emmaus moment.

Fallas in Elda

Spanish websites have improved no end in the time that we have been here. Nowadays it's nearly as easy to find something in Spanish as it is in English.

There are dishonourable exceptions of course. RENFE the state rail provider has a useless website. It may be possible to book a ticket and it may not but trying to find what trains go from where to where is impossible, so far as I can tell.

This being the case I had no worries about trying to find some information about the Fallas taking place in Elda this weekend. Google gave me the website and there was a skeletal but serviceable calendar. There wasn't much in the way of background information so if you didn't know what Fallas are then you would be a bit stymied but I did visit last year so I had a vague idea of how it all worked.

The basic idea is that a number of groups, comisiones, based on neighbourhoods build a falla. A falla is a sort of flammable tableau made of individual figures (which I think are called ninots) set against a built background. Usually the tableau represent a contemporary theme - maybe something political or sociological. Each Comisión also elects a series of "Carnival Queens" with a court of "ladies in waiting" and sends representatives, the mayordomos, to a central council which co-ordinates the whole shebang. There are activities all year round but the whole lot culminates with the tableau being built in the streets for a climactic weekend when there are parades, a mascletá (a sort of sound only firework display) and the burning of the tableau. The religious element, and there is nearly always a religious element in Spain, turns, I think, around San Crispín and San Crispiniano (The Henry V, Agincourt saints) the saintly brothers who are the patron saints of shoemakers. Shoemaking is an activity associated with Elda.

Last year I went looking for the various statues and found about four of the nine. I also followed a couple of the processions from their home base to a church but it was all a bit hit and miss. This year I thought to do it properly. So I tootled around the website and the Facebook page and eventually I found a timetable. Tomorrow, Sunday looked like a good day. I thought I could go to the mascletá at half past one and also wander around some of the fallas statues. I couldn't find the location of the individual fallas though and when I put the location of the mascletá into Google maps it came up with a blank. Another Google search and I found newspaper articles that gave me a clue as to the location but it had taken me a long, and frustrating, time.

Eventually I sent a snotty Facebook message to the Central Council something along the lines of "Do you want any tourists at your fallas? The answer has to be no. That's why there is no map of the location of the fallas and why the address of the mascletá isn't a real address. Ah of course, it's only for the people of Elda. The families with years of pure blood. I should have known". to give them their due they came back to me within a couple of hours with a little map and with a street name for each of the fallas and a comment to thank me for the message because it would help them improve the organisation.

So, if you have nothing much to do on the 18th of September and you are within striking distance of Elda I'll see you at the Fallas de Elda roundabout (Calle Juan Carlos I and Calle Jardines area) at half past one.

Forgetting Lionel Richie

Spain is in full fiesta season. Our local town, Pinoso, has just finished its fiestas or, more accurately, is about to finish in a couple of hours. The fairground has already left town, the barriers will be taken down tomorrow and all those temporary road signs removed. I would say we'll be back to normal but after so many days of non stop action lots of the town's bars and restaurants will be locked fast for a couple of weeks as will a lot of other businesses and we won't be back into the usual routine till September.

When we first got here I was keen to go to most of the various types of fiesta from the tiny village celebrations, where the fun might be a foam party or a bouncy castle, through to Moors and Christians, Semana Santa, Carnaval, Three Kings and all the other big events with thousands of people, late nights, lots of revelry and long, long processions. It would take ages to go through the various types of events we've been to. Maggie got tired of fiestas ages ago. She wasn't, for instance, for bothering with Romans and Carthaginians as long ago as when we lived in Cartagena.

I'm a bit underemployed at the moment. The real problem with not working is not earning. Time rich, cash poor as we used to say in the nineties. Maggie is working - all summer. So, if I do anything it costs money, which I don't have, and I have to do it alone.

I did think that I'd take advantage of the local fiestas this year as a cheap and easy to access form of entertainment. The truth is that my unwillingness to speak Spanish coupled with my increasing churlishness and a good dose of been there, done that means that I simply can't be bothered. I took one look at the children beating each other with the sausage dog shaped balloons at the village fiesta and turned on my heel. I grimly resolved to get involved in the Pinoso celebrations but I took the insinuation that I was some sort of sex offender quite badly and decided that a beer in front of the Spanish version of First Dates on the telly was a much more entertaining option.

I promise I will try to get out and about to a few more fiestas in the three weeks left of summer but I'm not guaranteeing anything.