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The suburb of Grazia – halfway across the city from Sant-Feliu and us -- opened its week-long ‘Festival’ yesterday, and we were there.
The five of us (3 adults, 2 little girls) took Barcelona’s leisurely but very comfortable tramway from one extreme of its line to the other, walked a quarter of an hour up the deceptively quiet Traverzza di Gracia .. and suddenly we were in the middle of it, just as the festival parade was about to start. All the traditional elements of the Spanish Fiesta were there – the horses, the sweet-throwing, the human-castle athletes, the stick-games, the ear-shattering drums and an even more ear-shattering marching ‘band’ of arquebuses. Quite how one Spaniard in three isn’t totally deaf I will never understand…
New to me were the fire-devils .. bands of men and girls in Mephistophelean costume, with long forks topped by big red fireworks .. when the crackers are lit, the ‘devils’ run and twirl and dance, in a rain of sparks, until the things explode with the millionth huge BANG of the day…
I’m not a man for crowds, but here we were in the middle of a whole suburb simply exploding with people (they say over a million people visit the festival during its week of life), and the atmosphere was grand. Everybody smiling, everybody laughing, everybody having a good time … all the joy that I didn’t see at Sitges was here at Grazia. And so were the beautiful people that Sitges lacked .. boys, girls, men, women, children … all together, filling the streets and hanging from the balconies, in a Babel of tongues and laughter, somewhere between Hansel and Gretel's cottage and the garlands of recycled everything.
With even a part of a million people thronging the Callers and bars and restaurants. we were lucky to find a table for the nine people we had become, but we did, and there we sat in the hot Spanish air and plastic chairs, drinking beer from plastic cups and nibbling delicious Spanish bits and pieces from plastic plates until what is for me far too late, but evidently for a six year-old French-Espagnol lass, a perfectly normal time.
After a quiet bus trip back to Sant-Feliu, I think it was something like 1.30am when I subsided under my sheet…
I always wondered why the Spaniards were so good at the Marathon. Now I think I know.
New to me were the fire-devils .. bands of men and girls in Mephistophelean costume, with long forks topped by big red fireworks .. when the crackers are lit, the ‘devils’ run and twirl and dance, in a rain of sparks, until the things explode with the millionth huge BANG of the day…
I’m not a man for crowds, but here we were in the middle of a whole suburb simply exploding with people (they say over a million people visit the festival during its week of life), and the atmosphere was grand. Everybody smiling, everybody laughing, everybody having a good time … all the joy that I didn’t see at Sitges was here at Grazia. And so were the beautiful people that Sitges lacked .. boys, girls, men, women, children … all together, filling the streets and hanging from the balconies, in a Babel of tongues and laughter, somewhere between Hansel and Gretel's cottage and the garlands of recycled everything.
With even a part of a million people thronging the Callers and bars and restaurants. we were lucky to find a table for the nine people we had become, but we did, and there we sat in the hot Spanish air and plastic chairs, drinking beer from plastic cups and nibbling delicious Spanish bits and pieces from plastic plates until what is for me far too late, but evidently for a six year-old French-Espagnol lass, a perfectly normal time.
After a quiet bus trip back to Sant-Feliu, I think it was something like 1.30am when I subsided under my sheet…
I always wondered why the Spaniards were so good at the Marathon. Now I think I know.
See the man at the " Balcon"....
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