Life in Culebrón

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 tow...

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 any...

In the 1970s I wore cheesecloth shirts and loons. I don't now. Looking back I shouldn't have then. In the film Beau Brummel, the one with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor, Beau caused a bit of a sensation when he appeared at court wearing full-length trousers rather than knee breeches and stockings. Watching the Pinoso Half Marathon it struck me that the competitors were wearing clothes that would have been outlandish at best, and scandalous at worst, not so long ago. Fashions change as they always have. If not I'd be dressed like Francis Drake or Somerset Maughan and Inditex and Primark would be customerless. Despite this constant change lots and lots of events in Spain feature something that we tend to call traditional dress. I was reminded of this when we went to see the start of a romería in Yecla the other day. There was no traditional costume there but it was something traditional, the repetitive, apparently unchanging ritual of rural, and not so rural, Spain. One...

I'm sure you've heard my theory before that you don't learn popular culture; if you're born somewhere then the culture is yours be that food, music, TV programmes or YouTube influencers. You can't help it. The talk at work, the talk at school, the stuff your parents tell you, the memes and gifs that turn up on your phone, the little snippets you read in the newspaper all help to make sure that you know what's going on. That's how, I suppose, I learned about MOTs, Trooping the Colour, Premium Bonds, the Boat Race, laverbread, the RNLI Lifeboats, Spaghetti Junction, Engelbert Humperdinck, driving on the left and how to make tea.  Changes in language are similar. Ordinary people are in charge. Words and phrases come and go. Some old academic bloke might argue that there is a perfectly good phrase to describe keeping a safe distance during a pandemic but everyone else is going to say social distancing whether he likes it or not. Somebody once asked me about how ...

We've just had a bit of a debate about where we were going to go this evening. The wine harvest fiesta in Jumilla is in full swing and tonight they have a Queen tribute band. Down in La Romana there's a Moors and Christians parade with music and bull running later. Chinorlet, the nearest village to Culebrón, is also partying for the weekend. Tonight they have a children's parade and then a band. In fact, within 45 minutes maximum travelling time we could go to Elche, Aspe, Cañada del Trigo or Fortuna instead. Oh, I nearly forgot and one of the outlying villages of Pinoso, Paredón, is at it too. In fact August 15th, a bank holiday for the Assumption of Mary, is the day when there are more fiestas in Spain than on any other day, the official count is more than 1,000. Jumilla is probably our first choice but the tribute band are not due on till half past eleven which means a start nearer midnight in reality. My guess is we wouldn't be home till maybe 2.30 and we'...

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 ...

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 o...

My brother went to see a bullfight in Alicante. He seemed quite surprised that it was bloody - I wondered what he'd expected. Personally I am totally opposed to bullfights. Arguments about art and heritage cut no ice with me. I'm a bit ambivalent about some things that some people consider to be animal rights issues though - animals in zoos being a good example. It's a bit the same with bull related events here in Spain. There are lots. Some are plain barbaric, they are simply the abuse of animals by humans reduced to their most savage but others aren't, in my opinion, quite so bad. There are some bull events that worry me no more than people keeping their dogs inside all the time or the donkey rides at the seaside. I'm sure you've seen Sanfermines on the telly where all those people run in front of half a dozen bulls in what's called an encierro, and which I think we call bull running. I don't care about it one way or the other. I'm not interest...

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 ...

I'm watching a fly trapped between the mosquitera, the fly screen, and the glass of the windows. It must have walked in but now it seems unable to retrace its steps. Bear in mind that that's my opening sentence, the considered first paragraph. Do the sensible thing and move on now! Hunting for something to write all I can think of is trivia. Second warning then.  The third cat, the newest cat, the skinniest cat, Gertrudis has nearly got to the point of trusting us. She doesn't always push off after she's wolfed down her food ration. In fact she's settled down on the sofa a couple of times to watch the afternoon news bulletin. Stroking is accepted but an attempt to remove a thorn or some such from her paw left me scratched and bleeding. She may yet move in for real though. I feared we were about to take on cat number four the other morning. Gertrudis turned up with a healthy looking white cat which, Maggie assures me, is Gertrudis's son. Clappin...

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...

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...

There's not much on Spanish telly on Friday night and so Maggie, who is much more telly aware than I am, often turns over to Gogglebox which I quite like as it doesn't feature baying crowds. As I weeded the garden I was thinking about the Siddiqui family - well them and the remarkable resilience of weeds. I pondered the Siddiquis speaking English to each other. Without knowing anything about them I presume that they are the second and third or maybe third and fourth generation descendants of someone who would not claim Derby as home. It is November so it's time for the meal and Annual General Meeting of the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association. It happened this afternoon, in fact it's probably still going on as, for the first time in years, I did a bunk from the AGM. I'm on, or maybe I was on, the management committee so skipping the meeting is probably a hanging, or maybe a garroting,  offence. When we are complaining to people about our lack of Spanish they ...

Nothing much to write. It's October, you may well have noticed, and the weather is a bit changeable. The usual weather pattern here is blue skies and sunny days all year round with a few days rain particularly in winter and spring. In summer the difference is that it just gets hotter and stays hotter longer. At the moment the maximum temperatures are only getting up to around 26/27ºC and overnight we get down to somewhere below 10ºC. Difficult weather to deal with. You put on a sweater and you swelter. You wear a T shirt and, in the shade, it's a bit nippy. At night it's cool. Only the Northern Europeans are still in shorts. Inside, in front of the telly, our house is distinctly chilly. We've had the gas fires on but not yet wound up the mighty roaring pellet burner. We've had some rain too. The sort of British rain that makes the soil claggy and leaves muddy footprints on the kitchen floor. There's still a fair bit going on round and about in the fiesta ...