fiestas – Page 5 – don't confuse the narrator

on holiday

Last weekend, the pueblo celebrated the fiestas of the local Virgin. (Not the summer fiestas – those were at the end of August, and not the fiestas for the patron saint – that’s next month: the Spanish are always happy to take days off work and chase bulls through the streets or set off firecrackers.)

Fireworks, Arenas de San Pedro, fiestas de la Virgen del Pilar

Now there is a lull in the village as the locals close up their shops to go and join the vendimia or take advantage of end-of-season offers to take their own holidays.
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royal oak day

A message in my inbox tells me:

It’s the 29th of May, Royal Oak Day:
if you don’t give us a holiday, we’ll all run away !

Strange how even the most ardent socialists are willing to consider becoming monarchists when there’s a holiday involved.

Still, I’ve talked in the past about the complications of political labelling as well as about the difficulties in talking about oaks and acorns in Spanish. So, since I seem already to have dealt with the obvious follow ons, and it isn’t actually a holiday, perhaps I’d better get on with some work!

abridged

I knew that la crisis had forced lifestyle changes on everyone in Spain, but I’m shocked to find it has apparently made inroads into a tradition that lies at the very heart of the Spanish psyche: el puente.

No, not that kind of puente. I’m talking about the puente that connects a public holiday to the weekend with an additional – official or unofficial – day off.

Tomorrow is San José, which is a fiesta for some comunidades. Usually, such holidays are celebrated on the actual day on which they fall, which means that when there’s a Tuesday or a Thursday fiesta lots of workers take the intervening day and make a four-day weekend of it.
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more burning issues

La inmaculada, 2012

In the orchard, you
are busy pruning
and tending a bonfire.
In the kitchen, the toaster
fails to pop; I offer up
my own burnt offering
to the Virgin.

In fact – as far as I know – Spain has no tradition of sacrificial fires to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, but most of the ‘clouds’ in the photo are really bonfire smoke, which does make me wonder.

There’s a longer poem for la Inmaculada, posted a couple of years ago, which was inspired by the painting by Tiépolo.

village fiestas

Spain goes from fiesta to fiesta and here in the village the first proper working week after the long summer has ended with celebrations in honour of Nuestra Señora la Virgen del Pilar de Arenas.