To everything there is a season

This time it's about localness and the annual flow of events but, as always, there's a long and sinuous lead in.

We moved here in 2004 and, at first, we knew very little about the ebb and flow of the Spanish year. As we hunted for a house to buy we rented in Santa Pola and, one evening, as we watched the telly, I got really fed up with the thud, thud thud of a couple of drums in the street. It was obviously a pair of lads on their way back from band practice. I went onto the balcony to give them a right rollicking only to find 50 blokes carrying a big frame on their backs and practising that rhythmic swaying that they use to manoeuvre the Easter floats. The drums were to mark time. I turned round and turned up the volume on the telly. We didn't know about the enormity of the Easter celebrations in Spain.

Just before our first Pinoso Fiestas, in the August of 2005, I was talking to a bloke called Ian who'd lived in Pinoso for a while. The first stall holders were beginning to set up and streets were closed to traffic. He pointed towards where Consum now is - Over there will be a stall selling knives, over there is where you'll get the best chips and don't forget to buy a waffle from el Flequi, he'll have his van up by Lothermans. He'll be playing Rock music. Ian had done the fiestas a few times and knew the drill.

Spanish Internet services were not well developed in 2005. I was hunting for something entertaining to do with our weekend. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across a calendar of events for the town of Novelda. The calendar listed what would happen for the Fiestas of Santa María Magdalena, it stressed the growing importance of Carnaval. There was a snag though, to me a serious flaw in a calendar, no dates. Joy turned to despair. I was angry enough to send a snotty email, in my dodgy Spanish, complaining that the town only cared about people whose grandparent's grandparents had lived in Novelda and they should be aware that life in Spain was now conditioned by the arrival of lots of we foreigners. They didn't reply of course, nobody ever replied to emails in Spain in 2005, but they did add dates to the calendar. 

This last Sunday I saw an event advertised for a guided tour of the Teatro Wagner in Aspe. I went and did the tour. It was interesting. As we looked around it became obvious that I was the only person who didn't live in Aspe. Lots of people on the tour knew the guide, Mariano, and those who didn't know him directly knew of him. They also knew the local councillors who were shadowing the tour. When Mariano talked about this or that event, this or that local personality and this or that place then everybody else knew what, or who, he was talking about. There was no problem with me being there but why would someone from Pinoso go to an event in Aspe?

The cyclical nature of things isn't particular to Spain. All over the place night follows day, Summer follows Spring and Easter and Christmas (at least in nominally Christian countries) come around year after year in a predictable way. It's the same everywhere and for lots of things from the Grand National to Halley's Comet. The date of Eid ul Fitr Eid is based on the sighting of the Lunar crescent and Diwali is on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Indian calendar. It always seems to me though that Spain, at least rural Spain, is more cyclical and more locally orientated than the place I was brought up. 

Spanish people seem to be happy to repeat what they do each year and to do it in the same place. It's unlikely that someone from Valencia would think to travel to the rival Fallas in Denia or that someone from Jumilla would go to see the Easter floats in Tobarra. Spain also seems very keen on the permanency of things even if they aren't that permanent. I often snigger at the posters that say that the Christmas Circus will be in the "usual place" even though it moves every year or the fiesta programme that says that the route for the Flower Offering will be the traditional one. The assumption is that the people who are going to a local event will know where the circus is or where the traditional route goes. One year Pinoso only did the leaflet for Villazgo event in Valenciano even though the town shares a border with three Castellano speaking municipalities!

There is though a feeling of permanece, of repetition, to so many Spanish events and something too of geographical immediacy. As the Easter procession in Pinoso moves along Calle Monóvar it will stop for someone to sing their saeta from the balcony and I'll be as emotional as I get when they shout ¡Costaleros! - ¡al Cielo con El! as Easter Thursday becomes Good Friday outside the Church in Pinoso. Over in Elda the torchlit procession will wend it's way down Monte Bolón at Epiphany. In Holy Week, in Malaga, the Legion will carry the Cristo de la Buena Muerte on their shoulders. On the 6th July at 12 noon they will launch the chupinazo, the rocket, from the 2nd floor of the Town Hall in Pamplona to get the Sanfermines under way and in Elche on the 14th and 15th of August lots of men and boys will dress up to deliver the Misteri d'Elx mystery play in ancient Valenciano in the Basilica just as they have done from the middle of the XV century.

And so on because: to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

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.