What a way to enjoy youself!

Festa Major has converted Terrassa from a normal busy city into a traffic jam. The Ramblas has a stage and a funfair on it and a parallel road has been upgraded to the major thoroughfare; except it isn’t made for the amount of traffic and so everything has ground to a halt. What precisely this festival means in terms of spectacle has not been made clear to me, but I have been promised a dragon.

To my plaintive call for fuegos artificiales (fireworks) to go with this dragon, I was informed that they were reserved for the end of the festivities; with the clear implication being that I was being greedy expecting all my treats at once!

After the let down that was Saint John’s Night’s Eve, I am reserving judgement until after tonight, but the reputation of the city is at stake!

The details of our new life continue to frustrate: there is, it appears always room for another piece of paper (or two if you count the photocopying) before normal life can be established.

We are girding up our loins to attempt to get to grips with the employment system in Castelldefels. Today, of course, was a holiday in Castelldefels so all our attempts to communicate by phone and by email were doomed to failure. It is, or it might be, the Feast Day of Saint Peter, so it was almost blasphemous for us to expect any municipal authority to respond to any communication that the ungodly might attempt, spurning the sanctity of such a day.

I am trying to remember how Saint Peter died: was it in the odour of sanctity or in the traditionally gruesome ways that early member of the church usually ended their days, or indeed a combination of the two. I am sure there is some grotesquely inappropriate confectionary that the Spanish have developed to celebrate the saint’s apotheosis. Going by the delicious cakes that we ate to celebrate Saint John, I do hope that Saint Peter’s cakes are at least on a par with the pastries of his holy colleague!

The Day After

No saint specific cakes, but something much better, fireworks!

One of George Bernard Shaw’s sayings which is sometimes trotted out to justify lazy perception came to mind during the evening festivities in Terrassa last night. Shaw said, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” There used to be fairly marked differences between Spain and the UK; certainly on my first visit I was aware that I was in a very ‘foreign’ country where the policemen carried guns, murderously camp men in tight trousers killed bulls and the general population ate with relish the tentacled denizens of the deep.

In Catalonia today in Terrassa and Barcelona there are very few differences in everyday life (apart from the ones that I noted in 1958!) so when you are presented with glaring differences you are more than surprised.

My bank manager, who at present is probably having treatment after my daily abrasive visits to him, was completely confused by my request that I have a cheque book connected with my account. He hunted through screen after screen to see if this outré demand could be realised within the Spanish banking system. It could not. Not with my account. I was to come to him when I needed a cheque and he would write it for me.

This is the sort of arrogant paternalism that used to exist when bank branches in Britain had actual bank managers in charge rather than the uppity clerks that staff these money making concerns nowadays. But even then we were actually allowed to write cheques all by ourselves. This is yet another abuse of the banking system that I will Have to Open a File about: be afraid BBVA; be very afraid!

Leaving aside the continuing persecution by Spanish banks (actually just BBVA) last night was another example of how the Spanish do things differently.

The start of Terrassa’s Festa Major was marked by general genteel merrymaking compared with what would have been a drink sodden embarrassment in Britain. Wandering past the funfair in the middle of the main street we passed families strolling through packed streets.

In one of the main squares in front of the Cathedral a raucous band was playing as if the major requirement was sound rather than subtlety and people were dancing the Sardana. This is a Catalan dance which requires people to hold hands in a circle and perform a series of steps to the music. For Catalans this is much more than a dance, it is a terpsichorean statement of national identity. Like the human castles that Catalans build, these odd demonstrations of a deep tradition are very moving to watch.

It all seemed rather low key until we came to the main square in front of the City Hall where there was a gathering of people wearing large caricature heads representing the local governmental officials who watched their cavorting parodies from the opulently draped balconies of the civic building. A clear view of the little dance these grotesques stumbled through was impeded by the backs of two giants directly in front of our vantage point.

These giants are another feature of Catalan festivities. These enormous figures are hollow allowing a person to be inside the character and actually carry the giant around, making it look as though this twelve to fifteen foot monster was actually walking. The two tradition characters are a king and queen who dance together. These are clothed in traditional fairy tale clothes with regal crowns. The rest of the figures are odder. The two other giants in the town square where of a man and woman in clothes from the 1920’s or 1930’s. It has been explained to me that this period in Catalan history was one of affluence and importance hence the dated appearance. These characters dance too, to general acclaim and delight.

After a lightish meal in a restaurant whose menu was cut down to basic snacks because of the festivities we returned to the square where the giants had given way to something darker and more impenetrable.

The square was packed with people forming a rough circle around two groups of characters from whose ranks alternately a person would advance towards a microphone and speak. One group was dressed as angels and the other devils. As I didn’t understand a word that anyone was saying and as no one enlightened me as to what was happening, I will make my own assumptions.

Even though I couldn’t understand the language that was being used, I could tell that the people were speaking in verse. As the debate continued (with the devils having the best of the argument going on the response of the crowd) I was reminded of the vitality of medieval mystery plays in which this sort of dialogue was common.

Eventually from the side of the angels a debonair and assertive angelic form appeared armed with a sword. His clearly combative approach provoked a murderous response from the devils who killed the angel to whoops of delight from the crowd.

Then, to put it mildly, all hell broke loose.

Drums started an insistent harsh rhythm and the square was filled with muffled figures who began to tramp around in a circle, into their midst erupted hooded figures brandishing pitchforks from whose tines fireworks were soon spraying showers of sparks on the crowd. Fire eaters disgorged immense plumes of flame while the screams of the exploding fireworks, the rhythmic beat of the drums and the yells of the crowd added to the atmosphere.

The square was filled with the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder and eyes were soon streaming and devil after skipping devil entered the square spraying fire, not only on the tramping forms in the middle but also on the unprotected observers at the sides. From time to time whole sections of the outer circle of watchers would recoil as a volcano of sparks attempted to ignite clothes and hair!

A spectacular highlight in the action was when one of the devils carried into the square what looked like a Tibetan prayer wheel which, when engulfed by an extruded plume of flame from one of the fire eaters, exploded into an apocalyptic vision of fiery hell.

Dragons, covered in fireworks and breathing real fire cavorted in the square scattering spectators but with the tramping figures seemingly immune to the conflagration.

The drums continued to beat as fiery horses came into the square, all the time accompanied by whooping devils. At some points all you could see were gesticulating horned silhouettes waving pitchforks in front of a sheet of sparkling fire. It was like one of Goya’s black pictures brought to startling life.

This was not a quick experience – a pyrotechnic moment; it was a sustained ritual: the hypnotic beat of the drums; the shuffling, circling figures constantly showered with fire; an occasional piercing blare of a brass instrument and a crowd half fascinated and half frightened.

Eventually, after well over an hour, to immense acclimation, a devil pranced into the centre with what looked like a tombstone with a cross on it.

Immediately the centre of the square cleared as this funereal object was placed in the middle. At that point, I must admit that I felt some apprehension myself. My reasoning was that anything that a crowd of fire dancing maniacs was wary of should bloody well frighten me. The crowd, though yelling encouragement put their fingers in their ears. I followed their example and felt the soft whumph! of a massive explosion, followed by a shower of spent gunpowder which fell like gentle rain on us all.

A remarkable experience and one which left me absolutely filthy. I’m still wondering what to make of it all. But I certainly enjoyed it.

Whatever it was.