I don't quite remember
when but it was long before we lived here. We were in Spain for a
holiday and a couple of friends, Pepa and Jaime, invited us to stay
in their flat in Bétera near Valencia.
Bétera was having its
annual fiesta and we went into town one evening to take part. I think
there was a parade, there were stalls and a fair, we ate some tapas,
we drank some beer and all sorts of normal fiesta things.
The next evening we
went back to the fiesta and to the town centre. We didn't park in the
same place. We walked much further than we had the night before. I
didn't know why. As we walked through the streets in the centre of
the town most of the windows were boarded up, there were no cars in
the streets. The whole town was odd. Either Jaime and Pepa didn't
explain very well or we didn't have enough Spanish to understand what
was going on.
We waited in the main
street with hundreds of other people. At the appointed hour someone
lit the blue touch paper and suddenly there was a wall of fire
advancing down the street towards us. I don't think we'd been
expecting that. How it worked was that there was a principal cord
running down the centre of the street and there were other fireworks
hung on other ropes that went from the buildings on one side of the
street to the other so that they criss crossed that central cord. As
the waterfall of fire advanced the crowd fell back, the more
foolhardy close to the fireworks and the wiser further back. Wading
through the fire zone, just behind the main fire-front, were some
blokes dressed in overalls and crash helmets carrying fire
extinguishers. They were there to pluck up the fallen or to
guide the panic stricken to safety and, if needs be, to put out anyone who was on fire. The cord ran into a square but the fireworks stopped a
few metres short of it so that, once you were in the square, you were
safe. The fun was that all the people who had been in the street, and
all the people who had been in the square before the fireworks
started, had to fit into an ever dwindling area as the fire pushed us
all back. A bit like that scene in Bambi. It was a tad sardine like and
Harvey Weinstein would have been busy but as the fireworks fell
silent and fizzled out we were still alive and unscathed.
When it was over Jaime
made us run back to the car insisting that we only had minutes to reach
safety. We had no idea why. As we headed back we passed
several groups of people who were putting the finishing touches to
their own version of the uniform of overalls, crash helmets and
gloves with lots of duct tape to seal the joins. They didn't have
extinguishers and fire blankets though. They were arming up with
Roman Candle type fireworks and, at one or maybe two in the morning
the signal would be given that they could engage in all out warfare
on the streets of Bétera. We saw something very similar years later on the streets of Elche on the Nit de l'Albà - the Night of the Dawn. That's why the properties were boarded up, that was why
there were no cars and that's why we were parked well out of harms
way.
The Cordá, for that's
what it is called was on last night, the 15th August, in Bétera. The
subsequent firework fight is, I think, called la Coheta
Every year, since we've lived here, it crosses my mind that we should go back to Bétera for the event. It was one of the
maddest fiestas that I've ever been involved in and it's been one of
my stock stories for over thirty years, right up with that one about
being on the wrong side of the fence, with fighting bulls, in Ciudad
Rodrigo. So I set to looking up the details of times and things yesterday. I
found some videos on YouTube of lots of people on the streets but
they were all booted and suited. Then I found a form to apply for
permission to be on the street for the Cordá. I didn't bother to read any further but it was obvious enough, now you have to apply to be potentially set on fire by a curtain of fire and you can't just turn up on a whim.
I was telling Maggie.
"Well, it's like Britons always say, Health and Safety wouldn't
allow this in the UK - now they don't allow it in Spain either".
Actually, I suppose that improves our story. When men were men and Spain was Spain and all that. Or it could be that I've misremembered the whole thing.
