Party time

fi•es•ta
1.
Any festival or festive celebration.
2

4. Popular small family car

(In Spain and Latin America) a festive celebration of a religious holiday.
3.
The opportunity for a small Spanish town or village to go mental for a week or so,  usually          accompanied by lots of alcohol, odd costumes and ridiculous quantities of fireworks.

Well, there you have it, my online dictionary’s description of the Spanish fiesta. Okay, I made up the last bit because the worldwide interweb didn’t go into anywhere near enough detail and I think it should have done, and now, I’ll to attempt to put even more meat on the bones. Despite being hotter than Kylie Minogue without much on, August in my world is also the month where Spain, a nation seemingly stuck in a swinging sixties style time warp, begins in earnest to kick the arse out of the word party. Imagine an Olympic Games opening ceremony, any one of them will do, and then put it on the streets of a small town. That’s fiesta week!

Bad combo - beer + fireworks

Quite often the organisers will con you into believing there is a religious significance to all the mayhem, so called Fiestas Patronales, where the life and times of a Saint or Virgin, the patron of the town or village, are commemorated. For example San Fermin in the northern city of Pamplona, where, first thing in the morning twelve pretty cheesed off bulls are herded from their pen on the edge of town through cobbled streets to the Plaza de Toros, about a kilometre away, accompanied by loads of unfit and drunk people, some of whom will finish up maimed for life. Closer to my home, in June Alicante spends over a week hosting events dedicated to San Juan, which is just an excuse for a load of arsonists to strut their stuff. Wherever they take place and for however long, I reckon these local fiestas could just as well be a giant homage to San Miguel because gallons of the stuff gets necked!!

Squatters who refused to leave

A great many years ago Spain was conquered by a bunch of hooligans in sandals who snuck over the water from North Africa and made themselves at home here. For eight centuries. Eventually, enough was quite enough and the vanquished locals rose up, sending the wispy bearded rag-heads back from whence they came. La Reconquista or re-conquest is now celebrated the length and breadth of Spain and is better known as the Moors and Christians fiestas. Most towns and villages combine the two different types of fiesta and the resultant week normally descends into an orgy of music, fancy dress and drunken debauchery.

Home for me is Elche, which gives it big licks during it’s fiestas in August from the 7th to the 15th with two highlights sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb. On the night of the 13th, the residents of the city, and by proxy much of the surrounding countryside, enjoy The Nit de L'Alba the most spectacular firework show you’ll ever see, in honour of the city’s patroness. Spectacular really is understating things a tad, for a full forty minutes Elche resembles a war zone, in 2009 some old folk in Benidorm thought the Costa Blanca was being invaded. Then, as if by magic, on the stroke of midnight the city falls silent and plunges into an eerie darkness as the Virgen de la Asunción, illuminated by a pyrotechnic halo, rises from the dome of the massive Basilica Santa Maria. A pretty unmissable event.

As well as all the traditional carnage, Elche’s fiestas are really built around the moving and deeply religious Misteri d'Elx  play. Performed in two parts on consecutive days, the 14th and 15th, act one, La Vesprà plots Mary passing away surrounded by the apostles. La Festa follows during which the burial, assumption and coronation of the virgin are depicted. These two days are the most important in the entire year and enjoy greater prominence in the city calendar than even Holy Week, (Semana Santa). In recognition of the stature of the event, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, (UNESCO), declared the Misteri one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Sure, quite a gobful but no higher accolade is bestowed for cultural expression. Apparently. 

No match for the towel-heads

For ex-pats fortunate enough to live by the coast, the Moors and Christians festivities start to get even more fun. And, if where they live also has a castle, then jackpot, it’s a racing certainty the town hall can put on the kind of opening ceremony to make even Beijing look a bit dull by comparison. In Santa Pola, the nicest place I’ve ever lived, the fiesta’s start on the 31st of August and run for nine days. They also tick all the right boxes. For a couple of hours of one morning the towns Levante beach is transformed into a kind of medieval D-Day but with a few less yanks. The idea is some of those naughty North Africans, complete with sharp knives stuck in their belts, try and sneak ashore only to be fended off by the local Home Guard who open fire in noisy and smoky style with trabucos, a kind of long barrelled replica rifle, a bit like a blunderbuss. Round two of the skirmishing inevitably takes place in and around the castle, where, this time Dads Army aren’t quite as lucky.

1977 and all that

It matters not where you live, during fiesta season the Spanish take very, very seriously their annual opportunity to err, not behave very seriously at all. The UK has nothing quite like the Spanish fiestas, sure, way back in 1977 there were a few street parties for Queenies Silver Jubilee and before that VE Day, but there really isn’t a fat lot to get excited about is there? You can bet your bottom dollar that within days of a fiesta, any fiesta, ending, the YouTube servers will be groaning under the weight of a mountain of new footage of pomp, pageant, pirates and quite a few pillocks. Visualise a week long combination of a typical British New Years Eve, (without all the arrests) and Bonfire Night and you’re getting there.

Sinead O’Conner once sang, “Nothing compares to you” She could easily have been referring to Spain.