Fiestas In A Small Pueblo
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
‘Albaricoque en Fiestas’, announced the banner, or would have done had it been the right way up. It took five men two hours to hoist the streamer, stretch it across the street, and secure the ends to rickety drainpipes. When they stood back to admire their handiwork, instead of correcting the mistake, they hung around looking puzzled, as if asking ‘well how the hell did that happen?’ Then they set off for the bar to discuss the matter in depth.
People have been arriving all week. Now there is no place to park, and the houses are crammed to capacity with relatives of every description. The bar, usually quieter than an undiscovered tomb, is suddenly filled to over-flowing, its tables and chairs spilling out across the pavement and into the street.
During the fiestas there is always a Concurso de Guinote, and the card tables for the tournament are placed ridiculously close to the Fronton court. For hours on end the players sit hunched over the game, their silence only broken by an occasional expletive regarding a bad hand, or some one else’s good luck.
In contrast, Fronton is played by swearing a lot while whacking a tennis ball up against a twenty-foot high wall. It’s a backwards and forwards game, a sort of early Iberian squash requiring more stamina than skill.
The Fronton court in Albaricoque is also the main square, two sides of which are formed by terraced houses. The wall was built in 1923. It was painted dark green, and the civic crest of Albaricoque proudly emblazoned at its apex. Now it is all faded, and the bottom half quite colourless and worn smooth by eighty years of being whopped by tennis balls. Behind the wall looms the church. At the other end of the square stands the Ayuntamiento, the town hall, the blood and guts colours of the Spanish flag draped over its balcony. Beneath the balcony is the bar.
As a rule the Fronton enthusiasts consider a ball to be out of play if it touches one of the houses on either side of the court. However, and for reasons hard to understand, play can continue backwards until some obstacle, like the bar, prevents further action.
The scenario, which is repeated from time to time throughout the fiestas, runs thus. Burly youth, his entire attention fixed on air-born tennis ball, staggers backwards wielding racket like battle axe. The result of this heroic attempt to return the shot is a spectacular collision with the Guinote players. Mayhem ensues. Tables are up-turned, glasses broken, and the old boys thrown into a state of uproar. The dazed ‘frontonero’ is flat on his back in the middle of the wreckage. Women cross themselves, muttering ‘Madre mia!’ Observing a window of opportunity, the ever vigilant Chispa runs off with the ball, and is chased by other burly youths brandishing tennis rackets. They return with a punctured ball. Order is finally restored. Fresh drinks are called for, and, but not with out a lot of grumbling, the card-players settle down to doing exactly what they had been doing before the ‘golpe’. And doing it in exactly the same positions, as if to ensure the maximum dramatic content of the next collision.
The fiestas continue for three days, starting officially with as many organisers as possible jostling for pride of place on the balcony of the Ayuntamiento. Colourful speeches about prosperity and greatness are made. The assembly below shouts ‘Viva Albaricoque’ despite not hearing a word because of the crappy P.A. system. Finally, and with much ado, a ‘chupinazo’, a skyrocket, is ignited with a cigar butt. Whoosh! It rides high above the pueblo, and detonates with such a bang that all the dogs, imprisoned in their corals, start howling. Their lament is quickly drowned by the Charanga, a street marching band, striking up a brassy tune.
Due to an organisational oversight another band at the other end of the pueblo does the same. Both bands approach the Ayuntemiento, neither able to hear the other. For a moment it looks like a situation down in 1900’s Storeyville, New Orleans, where the jazz bands accompanying funeral processions accidentally on purpose converged at cross roads where they tried to out-play each other in a noisy battle for higher audience ratings.
Worried Fiesta officials run to either end of the village and, instead of silencing one band, silence both. In the ensuing lull we can hear the dogs still howling. After some tricky negotiations one of the bands retires to the bar, and the other marches round the pueblo blasting out old favourites. The revellers follow arm in arm, swinging their backsides in time to the fidgety music.
Preferring to watch the spectacle, we make our way to the long table where the ‘aperitifs’ are laid out. No dainty dishes of gambas here, but neat rows of white plastic mugs, some filled with cheap olives, others with peanuts, and yet others with what the locals are pleased to call vermouth, a palate twisting drink with the bite of a hyena.
When all the plastic cups are empty, and the street covered in peanut shells, and the Charanga exhausted from its efforts, the crowd begins to thin as people drift off home for their evening meals.
Somewhat awash with vermouth, I go to bed. I am recalled from a troubled sleep by the ghostly strains of Yellow Submarine mixed with the howling of distant dogs, a sound hardly Spanish, but definitely foreign.
People are gathering in the square. Their bellies are full, and the night still young. A band is warming up for the ‘baile de tulipan’, a charming dance in which each pair of contestants are given a burning candle in a tulip-shaped holder. The band plays. The couples dance, their faces illuminated by the flickering flames. Seen from my bedroom window, through a haze of vermouth, it looks like the local chapter of Gnomes and Hobgoblins are having a get together in the Plaza Mayor.
One by one the candles go out and the dancers leave the floor. The contest is won by two thirteen-year-old girls, which presents the judges with the problem of whether to give them the champagne, or a packet of crisps. Their deliberations are cut short by one of the girls grabbing the bottle and legging it round the corner, half-a-dozen shrieking kids in her wake.
The church clock strikes three. The square is full of dancing people. The band is typical of those that play at weddings and fiestas, where they mindlessly knock out the same old stuff year after year. The front man is middle-aged, a dinner jacket stretched tightly across his ‘curva de felicidad’, his curve of happiness, better known to the English as beer gut. He is flanked by two lumpy girls in red, pvc mini-skirts and white, knee-high boots. It seems unlikely that the musicians were chosen for their looks - or talent. I suspect most of them are related to the fat man in the dinner jacket, whose job, it seems, is to present the crowd with some of the most terrible music I’ve ever heard. But so what, the square is full of dancing people, kids, parents, grandparents, all of them having a good time.
The church clock strikes six, and all I can hear is the inane chatter of the serious drinkers standing ankle deep in litter outside the bar. I get up and peer through the window. Silhouetted against the first light is Taniz, a blanket round his shoulders, picking his way through the empty beer bottles. The drunks shout amiable insults at him. He shakes his fist at them, and continues his slow way down to the river. I think Taniz and I probably have the same opinion of fiestas – they are a necessary madness.
At nine o’clock, and just in case anybody is getting too involved with sleep, there is a ‘Diana Floreada’. My dictionary tells me that ‘diana’ means reveille, and ‘floreada’ translates as flowery. I would hardly describe a hung-over band striking up some out-of-tune march from the days of Franco as flowery. Resisting the temptation to throw a bedside table at them, I go down stairs to prepare myself for day two of ‘Albaricoque en Fiestas.’
People have been arriving all week. Now there is no place to park, and the houses are crammed to capacity with relatives of every description. The bar, usually quieter than an undiscovered tomb, is suddenly filled to over-flowing, its tables and chairs spilling out across the pavement and into the street.
During the fiestas there is always a Concurso de Guinote, and the card tables for the tournament are placed ridiculously close to the Fronton court. For hours on end the players sit hunched over the game, their silence only broken by an occasional expletive regarding a bad hand, or some one else’s good luck.
In contrast, Fronton is played by swearing a lot while whacking a tennis ball up against a twenty-foot high wall. It’s a backwards and forwards game, a sort of early Iberian squash requiring more stamina than skill.
The Fronton court in Albaricoque is also the main square, two sides of which are formed by terraced houses. The wall was built in 1923. It was painted dark green, and the civic crest of Albaricoque proudly emblazoned at its apex. Now it is all faded, and the bottom half quite colourless and worn smooth by eighty years of being whopped by tennis balls. Behind the wall looms the church. At the other end of the square stands the Ayuntamiento, the town hall, the blood and guts colours of the Spanish flag draped over its balcony. Beneath the balcony is the bar.
As a rule the Fronton enthusiasts consider a ball to be out of play if it touches one of the houses on either side of the court. However, and for reasons hard to understand, play can continue backwards until some obstacle, like the bar, prevents further action.
The scenario, which is repeated from time to time throughout the fiestas, runs thus. Burly youth, his entire attention fixed on air-born tennis ball, staggers backwards wielding racket like battle axe. The result of this heroic attempt to return the shot is a spectacular collision with the Guinote players. Mayhem ensues. Tables are up-turned, glasses broken, and the old boys thrown into a state of uproar. The dazed ‘frontonero’ is flat on his back in the middle of the wreckage. Women cross themselves, muttering ‘Madre mia!’ Observing a window of opportunity, the ever vigilant Chispa runs off with the ball, and is chased by other burly youths brandishing tennis rackets. They return with a punctured ball. Order is finally restored. Fresh drinks are called for, and, but not with out a lot of grumbling, the card-players settle down to doing exactly what they had been doing before the ‘golpe’. And doing it in exactly the same positions, as if to ensure the maximum dramatic content of the next collision.
The fiestas continue for three days, starting officially with as many organisers as possible jostling for pride of place on the balcony of the Ayuntamiento. Colourful speeches about prosperity and greatness are made. The assembly below shouts ‘Viva Albaricoque’ despite not hearing a word because of the crappy P.A. system. Finally, and with much ado, a ‘chupinazo’, a skyrocket, is ignited with a cigar butt. Whoosh! It rides high above the pueblo, and detonates with such a bang that all the dogs, imprisoned in their corals, start howling. Their lament is quickly drowned by the Charanga, a street marching band, striking up a brassy tune.
Due to an organisational oversight another band at the other end of the pueblo does the same. Both bands approach the Ayuntemiento, neither able to hear the other. For a moment it looks like a situation down in 1900’s Storeyville, New Orleans, where the jazz bands accompanying funeral processions accidentally on purpose converged at cross roads where they tried to out-play each other in a noisy battle for higher audience ratings.
Worried Fiesta officials run to either end of the village and, instead of silencing one band, silence both. In the ensuing lull we can hear the dogs still howling. After some tricky negotiations one of the bands retires to the bar, and the other marches round the pueblo blasting out old favourites. The revellers follow arm in arm, swinging their backsides in time to the fidgety music.
Preferring to watch the spectacle, we make our way to the long table where the ‘aperitifs’ are laid out. No dainty dishes of gambas here, but neat rows of white plastic mugs, some filled with cheap olives, others with peanuts, and yet others with what the locals are pleased to call vermouth, a palate twisting drink with the bite of a hyena.
When all the plastic cups are empty, and the street covered in peanut shells, and the Charanga exhausted from its efforts, the crowd begins to thin as people drift off home for their evening meals.
Somewhat awash with vermouth, I go to bed. I am recalled from a troubled sleep by the ghostly strains of Yellow Submarine mixed with the howling of distant dogs, a sound hardly Spanish, but definitely foreign.
People are gathering in the square. Their bellies are full, and the night still young. A band is warming up for the ‘baile de tulipan’, a charming dance in which each pair of contestants are given a burning candle in a tulip-shaped holder. The band plays. The couples dance, their faces illuminated by the flickering flames. Seen from my bedroom window, through a haze of vermouth, it looks like the local chapter of Gnomes and Hobgoblins are having a get together in the Plaza Mayor.
One by one the candles go out and the dancers leave the floor. The contest is won by two thirteen-year-old girls, which presents the judges with the problem of whether to give them the champagne, or a packet of crisps. Their deliberations are cut short by one of the girls grabbing the bottle and legging it round the corner, half-a-dozen shrieking kids in her wake.
The church clock strikes three. The square is full of dancing people. The band is typical of those that play at weddings and fiestas, where they mindlessly knock out the same old stuff year after year. The front man is middle-aged, a dinner jacket stretched tightly across his ‘curva de felicidad’, his curve of happiness, better known to the English as beer gut. He is flanked by two lumpy girls in red, pvc mini-skirts and white, knee-high boots. It seems unlikely that the musicians were chosen for their looks - or talent. I suspect most of them are related to the fat man in the dinner jacket, whose job, it seems, is to present the crowd with some of the most terrible music I’ve ever heard. But so what, the square is full of dancing people, kids, parents, grandparents, all of them having a good time.
The church clock strikes six, and all I can hear is the inane chatter of the serious drinkers standing ankle deep in litter outside the bar. I get up and peer through the window. Silhouetted against the first light is Taniz, a blanket round his shoulders, picking his way through the empty beer bottles. The drunks shout amiable insults at him. He shakes his fist at them, and continues his slow way down to the river. I think Taniz and I probably have the same opinion of fiestas – they are a necessary madness.
At nine o’clock, and just in case anybody is getting too involved with sleep, there is a ‘Diana Floreada’. My dictionary tells me that ‘diana’ means reveille, and ‘floreada’ translates as flowery. I would hardly describe a hung-over band striking up some out-of-tune march from the days of Franco as flowery. Resisting the temptation to throw a bedside table at them, I go down stairs to prepare myself for day two of ‘Albaricoque en Fiestas.’
