 FESTIVALS
& EVENTS
Splendour, gaiety and the imagination of the nation as a whole are the
basic features of the Spanish fiesta. The year’s festive highlights
turn the public into active participants and passive spectators who are
nevertheless aware of being both things at once.
Fiestas, a phenomenon that gives expression to a peculiarly Spanish vitality,
take place almost uninterruptedly in different places and at different
times of the year, so that the traveller will always find an occasion
to witness one of these magical, spectacular happenings that alter the
daily routine of Spanish society.
Carnival
In February, masks, clowns, gigantes (giant pasteboard figures), grotesques
and devils are the central characters in Spain’s first festivity
of the year. The carnival in Lanz (Navarre) with its mythological figures
(Ziripot and Zaldico) speaks of a thousand-year-old tradition, as does
the fiesta in Villanueva de la Vera (Cáceres) with the burning
of the effigy of Pero-Palo. The carnival assumes an air of satire and
buffoonery in Cadiz, with its charangas (bands of street musicians) and
explodes into a spectacle of dance and fireworks in Tenerife and Las Palmas
de Gran Canaria, which rival each other in and beauty.
Fire and gunpowder take centre stage in March. Valencia celebrates its
traditional fallas (from the Latin "facula" or "fax",
meaning torch) during the week leading up to St. Joseph's Day, bringing
to the fore all the ingenuity, hullabaloo and passion which this universally
famous celebration implies, in the climactic burning of the ninots, the
satirical papier mâché effigies.
Religious feasts
Holy Week is the religious feast par excellence, in which tradition is
timeless and unshakeable. The Easter processions of the cofradías
(guilds or brotherhoods) and the sublime beauty of the floats or pasos
assume special relevance in places like Seville, Valladolid, Zamora, Murcia
and Cuenca. |