Cole's Summer in Spain: "When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire"

On Tuesday and Wednesday the young women from all over town in their traditional dresses brought hundreds of flower bouquets to form this tribute to the Virgin Mary in front of the main church. It was incredible and covered on all sides! This is on Friday, so they are a bit old.

Thursday 6/23- Friday 6/24

Thursday.

Since I didn’t have work I slept late and eventually made my way to the beach for the normal volleyball and lounging. Afterwards they had a traditional dance at the Ayuntamiento that I watched. It was very repetitive and rhythmic as they moved in synchronicity around the hoguera. Then they made the girls in the beauty pageant with their huge traditional dresses join in and it was funny to watch them try to pick up the dance. After a quick dinner I went right back out to the international parade that was going on. I actually managed to watch the whole 2-hour ordeal. It was pretty interesting since they had people, dresses, floats, dancers, and musicians from all different regions of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries. It was funny observing and listening to the old ladies sitting in the chairs in front of me that lined the street and thinking how they were totally in their element and prolly lived for this stuff. I’m sure they got there plenty early to get their seats and the whole time they were commenting to each other, yelling ‘Guapa, guapa!’ (pretty) and laughing as the guys in the parade would come up to dance in front of them or pass bottles of wine throughout the crowd and they would all sample it with their little cups (E).

The parade on Thursday night had a small regiment of giants.

These were called the bellezas (beauties). I have no idea how the pageant worked, but I think their were bellezas competing from many different neighborhoods and the one who wins is a big deal and gets her face everywhere and makes lots of public appearances.

I think these were bellezas from another town. The first half of the parade was 95% women with several more floats like this. They like showing off their ladies!

Shaking his tail-feathers for those old ladies in front of me.

feathers galore!

Snow white made it! I think Popeye has his back to us, and the dwarves, porky, and Minnie are distinguishable as well.

The horses marched in fancy prances and synchronized patterns.

These guys walked behind and got the loudest applause out of anyone.

passionate dancing

calculated dancing

the North African float

the Mexican float with the Mariachi band

dancers from Peru

dancers from Bulgaria

primitives from Venezuela? The one barely had little circles to cover her nipples... quite brave for a parade.

Dancers from Chile (M)

dancers from a volcano? I dk.

Once the parade had finished and we had finally pushed through the complete gridlock of the crowd Quinten and I went to stop by the baracca of one of his co-workers that he had been invited to. We were only going to stay for around 30 minutes and then go to the beach or possibly the baracca of my friend. We left 4 hours later! It was really cool to be part of a traditional Spanish baracca. The girl and a group of around 10 of her friends had rented a table and just chilled there every night wining and dining, listening to music and dancing. It was lots of fun to just chat with Lia and Sergio and they were very hospitable and kept refilling our drinks as soon as we were finished. We even learned a new party trick called the Fran, courtesy of Fran.

This is more or less what a typical baracca looks like. Set up in the street, fenced in, lots of tables piled with food, seats full of friends, and loud music from a DJ with a dance area at one end.

It was around 3:30 when we left to their disappointment, but we didn’t want to overstay our welcome and we had heard there were some interesting things going on at the beach. When we go there it was still packed, but our friends had left. The tradition of that night where people built fires on the beach (the only day of the year they can), threw three wishes into them, jumped over it, ran into the ocean, and jumped over 6 waves to purify themselves from the bad stuff of the previous year was over. I don’t know if they get ‘’purified” from sins or bad luck or it’s like New Year’s Resolutions or what, but it kinda sounds a bit like some strange VooDoo ritual. I even heard they burned some big figure and there were devils dancing around it or something. I was quite disappointed that we missed the fire jumping, but I think spending time with our new Spanish friends at their baracca was worth it. We turned in early after seeing we had missed the fun and I had rough night of sleep.

The beach was still packed around 3:30 Thursday night. This doesn't even give you the full scope, but it's a start.

Friday

It was prolly because of my irregular sleep that I didn’t wake up until 2:30 the next day. I was woken up by the mezclata! I never thought I could sleep that late, but I guess all the late nights finally caught up to me. At the beach that afternoon I was playing this really popular paddleball game (you just hit this plastic ball back and forth) with Hamid in the shallows when I lunged for the ball and felt something sharp on my foot. I yanked my foot up right away and reached down to find a piece of glass the size of my palm no doubt left from the night before. Even though I wasn’t cut, it was quite scary that anyone could’ve stepped on that at anytime. I am lucky my feet have gotten so tough from all the walking on sand.

Tonight is the big night where they burn all the hogueras. It all starts at midnight with the giant hoguera at Ayuntamiento, so we went there at 11 to try and get a spot to see it. We immediately got separated from half our group, but I was still with Quinten, Allan, Hamid, Marianne, and Catherine. Even though we got there at 11 it was incredibly packed and we could barely see half the hoguera from our angle. They had the whole town square blocked off for safety and firefighters were inside with their hoses ready. When 12 hit there was a giant explosion and we saw a massive ‘palmero’ (willow tree type firework) explode above the castle and that was the signal. Hogueras had begun!

The one at Ayuntamiento was giant!

Next we heard a series of firecrackers explode and the hoguera infantile was the first set aflame. As the blaze of that one burned down the huge one in the middle was torched as the strings of fireworks wrapped around it went off and set off the gasoline soaking the outside. The heat was incredible even at our distance and in the center of the crowd. As the huge branches of the hoguera were consumed the embers started to fly into the sky faster than the firefighters could spray them down. Before I knew it the sky above me was filled with floating embers like stars in the Wyoming sky. People started to panic and began rushing past us away from the fire. That was perfectly fine with me because amidst the hubbub we moved up to take their spots and got a great view. With the fair-weather spectators gone and in our front row position I was able to get several great pictures before the firefighters’ spray forced me to stuff my camera and phone in my back pockets and hope for the best. Just then the insults to the firefighters intensified and the chants of ‘agua’ grew louder so the firefighters really gave us some face-fulls of the wonderfully refreshing water. The speakers were blasting the hoguera song made about the festival and everyone was jumping around like mad and loving getting completely soaked. Soon we left to hunt down the next hoguera since they were all getting lit up throughout the city now, but not having the schedule made it a lot tougher.

The crowd watching Ayuntamiento begin to burn as it is lit up by fireworks!

You can see the spray of firefighters cutting through the air. It fell on us in blankets.

After a Gofre break we made our way in and out of the streets seeing hogueras in various stages of incineration. When we came upon the fountain at La Plaza de Luceros we decided we had to join the crowd that was splashing around inside it. We finally found a hoguera that was just about to be burned and this time we were up front from the beginning. From there I left the group to try to meet up with my Spanish friend, but that ended in a big fail when her phone died and no one had heard of her neighborhood. I just ended up watching four other hogueras burn in much the same fashion and with much the same result. The excitement of the night was contagious and I was definitely sorry to see it end in the early hours of the morning.

Hasta Luego,
Cóle

I went around Friday afternoon capturing as many hogueras as I could find before they were burned. Enjoy the tour of Hogueras!

This was the hoguera the won first prize and it was right down the street from my house! Nobody else I know even tried to see it because it was so far away.

Harry Potter (E)

They love this image of Christ crying. It was drawn above an entrance at the Castle and they claim it was the image he left in the cloth that a lady wiped his face with on the way to the cross.