Fiesta!

Our first Fiesta! I adore the poster advertising the event, so here you can see it too.

All the shops were closed today. Again. I had to double check that it was not Sunday again. Nope, but it's some fiesta day and the shops are definetelly closed, this make it twice this week. Not brilliant if this catches you by surprised but nice to have a break if you're a hard working person (which I hope I'll become soon). We didn't have enough breaks in England at all.

There's also a big fiesta starting today at Gracia's neighborhood in Barcelona, so at around 5ish pm we took the tube and went. Actually, the tube here is called the metro and it's ok for me but not nice for my dad because most station don't have lifts and the scalators are usually only to go up; so it takes ages for my dad to go anywhere. A true nightmare for wheelchair bound people. Not nice in such a turistic hotspot.

We arrived too early and the streets were almost empty, which made it very nice to explore in peace before everybody arrived. But soon enought the quite and lovingly decorated streets were bursting with people.

Many streets were decorated using scraps and other sort of re-claimed material such as plastic water bottles in very imaginative ways. My favourite was one with huges sunflowers all over the place.

Mostly by chance we arrived to a square where a group of musicians (brass band) were geting ready to play. We even found nice places to sit (great for my dad as his knees can't suport him for long) and soon enough the band was ready and they started to play a nice, repetitive tune. A middle aged couple started to dance side by side holding hands in the style familiar with many Mediterranean's dances, from here to Greece and even Israel. Soon enough one lady joined them and they formed a circle. Then, more and more people joined them (even a couple of clueless tourists who did their best to try to follow the little jumps and turns) until they were around 40. This is called sardana and it's an ancient and traditional dance from Catalunya. It was lovely to see it. My dad told me that last time he was here (during the 70's) he saw it being danced at the Catedral's square; at the time Franco was in power and every show of Catalan culture was forbiden (from the use of the Catalan language in public to the use of traditional Catalan names fro children) so the dancing at the time was as much a political statement as a fun folky dancing.

We had some overpriced tapas (the fiestas in Spain are turist traps, we should had known better) and while we walked around we saw a group of people dress with blue and yellow capes with horns on their hoods carring sticks with fireworks on their tips. They lighted their fireworks and then performed a sort of dances while rotating the sticks around them. They marched along the street and were followed by a bunch of guys dressed similarly with drums and, of course, a huge admiring crowd. We loved it!

Soon it started to rain a bit and we were told that all music shows programed for latter will have to be cancelled if it keep raining, so we decided to call it a nigh and go back home. That was lucky because as soon as we were back home a big storm developed, tropical style with even very dramatic lighting. Pity as we've been told that ussually the party goes on until the early hours of the morning.

Beautiful.