Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, August 07, 2004

This being the first Saturday in August, it is the big fiesta day in Pontevedra – Feast of the Virgin Pilgrim – and the start of 3 or 4 weeks of non-stop partying in town.

This year we have a real, grown-up corrida - with the three bullfights taking place on consecutive evenings, not over a week or so as they have in the past. The first was last night and, as ever, it was the signal for the town’s youth to get comprehensively drunk. For the most part, this is done under the auspices of the numerous peñas - or ‘cliques’ – which get together to support the bullfights. Or, these days, to oppose them. Not so long ago it was the custom for peña members to spill the occasional drop of wine on the shirt of a member of an opposing group. Then it was wine-filled water pistols. And now it is water machine-guns. In one of the town’s squares at 11pm last night I witnessed something that was little short of a bacchanal. Rarely – if ever – have I seen so many young people so drunk. And so wet. But here’s the funny thing – not the slightest hint of aggression. An eerie experience for an Englishman used to dodging pugnacious drunks back in the UK. And – even more impressive - by midday today, the square had been restored to its normal pristine condition. Bottle-less, rubbish-less and vomit-less.

The local paper provided a huge supplement on the Fiesta today. Two things in particular caught my attention. The first was an article from the President of the Brotherhood of the Virgin Pilgrim, calling on us to bear in mind the religious element of the festivities. And the second was an article on the people of Porto Santo – on the outskirts of town – who insist that Christopher Columbus was born there. Two groups of people living in cloud-cuckoo-land perhaps. The nice headline on the Columbus article was “It’s hard to prove the great explorer was born in Genoa”. Or Manchester, I imagine. But not Porto Santo, apparently.


For anyone interested in knowing more about the fiesta, there is a new section [The August Fiesta] in my guide to Pontevedra that you can access from my web page – colindavies.net


We have a young Spanish friend, a very intelligent young lady who is a qualified lawyer and who is taking a Business Studies degree at a major university. She called me at 12.30 last night for my daughter’s mobile phone number, saying that she had lost it. Since this is the 5th time this has happened, it would be tempting to ask how someone so intelligent could be so doo-lally. But then, as I now know from Manoel, she doesn’t actually mean that she has lost the number and she doesn’t believe that I will think that she has. It’s just words and the Spanish love them.


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