Fiesta

I remember when I was a little girl that in the month of August my parents would take me to the Italian festivals in the North End of Boston. There the Italian community celebrated (and still does) the more prominant Italian saints. I remember food stands and stands where you could buy curiosities, like a blue rabbit's foot my mother bought me one year. I also remember the processions carrying the saints. The funny thing is I don't remember the street music, but there must have been. Italians are much like Spaniards when it comes to celebrations. They exalt them with music.

Well, every time we came here on summer vacation we would go to a local festival and I would be reminded of the festivals in the North End. In the smaller villages during the afternoon there are pasacalles, where small bands or bagpipers travel to different villages of the parish and play up and down the lanes. With them goes the fogueteiro, the man who lights a rocket firecracker and with its noise alerts all the neighbors that the parish is celebrating the festival of its patron saint. In the evening there is the verbena, when hired musical groups set up their travelling stages and with colored lights and potent loudspeakers to help the neighbors celebrate with music and stage shows. Generally, the stages are set up in a central area of the parish where they can fit. There the commission of neighbors that have the dubious honor of going from house to house asking for money and then arranging everything, set up a bar where all the proceeds go to help fund the next year's festival. Also to help with the proceeds some vendors are allowed to set up shop nearby. What they pay goes to the commission. In parish festivals those vendors are usually food vendors and one or two that have toys and curiosities. 

In larger towns the groups set up their stages in the main square, and in the streets all around there are vendors of all kinds. In another area with enough space, the fair attractions are set up. There are all sorts of rides where you can get shaken down to your marrow and scared out of your wits while laughing and screeching the entire time. There are also rides for small children such as merry-go-rounds with cars, horses, carriages, motorcycles, and tea cups. There are even bumper cars and a small circuit with karts. My daughter has driven her father on the bumper cars. He's never been the same since. Which is why I refuse to go with her.

Generally the music starts at ten thirty or eleven, after it's dark, and there are two groups that play for around a couple of hours each, ending definitely around three or four in the morning. (Or when the last parishioner leaves.) I remember one childhood year when we were here on vacation and we went to our small parish festival one night in the month of August. I remember sitting on a low stone wall while the music played and the colored bulbs above danced in the wind and people around us talked and laughed. "En la fiesta de Blas, en la fiesta de Blas, todo el mundo bailaba con unas cuantas copas de más...." I've never forgotten that song yet. The music and the songs would bounce off the stone walls of the houses around us and arise in the night sky to be heard where the wind would take them. Afterwards we would walk home in the dark, along the side of the black road. There were no street lights back then, and few cars. I remember the night was not as completely black as I had thought. The moon lit up whatever it touched with a surreal light. If you looked at something it would taunt you and the details would dance away. But if you looked out of the corner of your eye you could see it clearly. I assume my mother put me to bed directly we got home. I don't remember, but I do remember being sleepy walking back. Our parish festival was definitely different from the Italian festival in Boston's North End. But it had a related magic.