Choose Your Perdition
It's our parish festival this weekend. Ours and just about everybody else's. Between this weekend and the next, most of Galicia will be jumping. Last month, around the 16th, there were festivals up and down the entire coast. It was the feast day of the Virxe do Carme, one of the many monikers of the Virgin Mary. O Carme is supposed to protect sailors and others who set out to sea. Hence, the coastal revelry. This month is the anniversary of Mary's Assumption into Heaven (let's leave it at that), and the second round of festivals all over the place. If you want troula (Galician), juerga (Castilian), to paaaarrtyy! (English), Galicia is the place to be in August.
Our parish has three days of celebration, each dedicated to a saint venerated in the parish. There's the Virgin Mary (our parish isn't called Santa María for nothing), Saint Roche (don't look at me) and Saint Anne (comprehensible, she was Mary's mother, after all). Each night, except Sunday (low budget), there are two bands playing, mostly, latina music in a park near the church. (The lyrics in Spanish are easier to learn.) There are other activities during the day, including a soap foam festival for children on Sunday evening.
The most important celebrations, however, are behind closed doors. The parishioners will settle down to the most sacred form of celebration; eating. Shellfish is the main course in most homes, which is why it's at its most expensive outside Christmas. Barbecueing, Galician-style, is also popular. Forget hickory chips, roasted corn on the cob, spicy tomato-based barbecue sauce, or fancy gas-powered barbecues. The Galician way to do it is over firewood, which can be lit even at the bottom of a metal drum, but is usually on a lareira, an open stone fireplace. Sometimes the meat spends an hour or so in a sauce made up principally of vinegar, oil, garlic, and paprika, but generally that sauce is passed around afterwards, as well as Tabasco sauce (Louisiana, you're popular here), and the meat is roasted as is. The only vegetables that are served are little pementos de Padrón, small green peppers that are fried and eaten whole. If you're lucky, none will be hot; if you're not, you'll hydrate yourself enough for the day at one sitting.
There are all kinds of festivals in the middle of August, not just the local ones. There is the seafood festival at the Illa de Arousa, where all kinds of shellfish and sardines are served at (depending on income) reasonable prices. There's the octopus festival at O Carballiño, which, though an inland town, is famous for how it serves up this dish. (Don't be squeamish - it's delicious sprinkled with salt, oil, and paprika.) There was the Albariño wine festival in Cambados at the beginning of the month, where you could soak in different wineries. (And, yes, some people got really soaked in the colloquial form.) There are pilgrimages to hilly chapels that turn into all-day picnics in honor of a saint. (Avoid those young people lugging bottles of red wine unless you want to dye yourself red after lunch; they use it to bombard each other inside and out.) There is the festival in Vilagarcía that includes a free-for-all with water in a central plaza where the objective is to get everyone and everything wet. (Take a change of clothes and a towel in the car - you'll definitely need them.) There are fireworks (up to a half-hour long). There are music festivals with different national and foreign bands, such as the Festival do Noroeste in A Coruña where The Pretenders are playing tonight (yes, we're going). Take your pick.
Half of these, unless you happen to be a local, you have to dig up on internet. Which is how I found out about The Pretenders after my husband saw a tiny article on an interior page of the regional newspaper a couple of months ago. But, however one finds out about things, this is not a month to be bored. There's something happening somewhere almost every day.
Now, to prepare today's plentiful, seafood lunch, and listen to the bagpipes when they pass by.
Our parish has three days of celebration, each dedicated to a saint venerated in the parish. There's the Virgin Mary (our parish isn't called Santa María for nothing), Saint Roche (don't look at me) and Saint Anne (comprehensible, she was Mary's mother, after all). Each night, except Sunday (low budget), there are two bands playing, mostly, latina music in a park near the church. (The lyrics in Spanish are easier to learn.) There are other activities during the day, including a soap foam festival for children on Sunday evening.
The most important celebrations, however, are behind closed doors. The parishioners will settle down to the most sacred form of celebration; eating. Shellfish is the main course in most homes, which is why it's at its most expensive outside Christmas. Barbecueing, Galician-style, is also popular. Forget hickory chips, roasted corn on the cob, spicy tomato-based barbecue sauce, or fancy gas-powered barbecues. The Galician way to do it is over firewood, which can be lit even at the bottom of a metal drum, but is usually on a lareira, an open stone fireplace. Sometimes the meat spends an hour or so in a sauce made up principally of vinegar, oil, garlic, and paprika, but generally that sauce is passed around afterwards, as well as Tabasco sauce (Louisiana, you're popular here), and the meat is roasted as is. The only vegetables that are served are little pementos de Padrón, small green peppers that are fried and eaten whole. If you're lucky, none will be hot; if you're not, you'll hydrate yourself enough for the day at one sitting.
There are all kinds of festivals in the middle of August, not just the local ones. There is the seafood festival at the Illa de Arousa, where all kinds of shellfish and sardines are served at (depending on income) reasonable prices. There's the octopus festival at O Carballiño, which, though an inland town, is famous for how it serves up this dish. (Don't be squeamish - it's delicious sprinkled with salt, oil, and paprika.) There was the Albariño wine festival in Cambados at the beginning of the month, where you could soak in different wineries. (And, yes, some people got really soaked in the colloquial form.) There are pilgrimages to hilly chapels that turn into all-day picnics in honor of a saint. (Avoid those young people lugging bottles of red wine unless you want to dye yourself red after lunch; they use it to bombard each other inside and out.) There is the festival in Vilagarcía that includes a free-for-all with water in a central plaza where the objective is to get everyone and everything wet. (Take a change of clothes and a towel in the car - you'll definitely need them.) There are fireworks (up to a half-hour long). There are music festivals with different national and foreign bands, such as the Festival do Noroeste in A Coruña where The Pretenders are playing tonight (yes, we're going). Take your pick.
Half of these, unless you happen to be a local, you have to dig up on internet. Which is how I found out about The Pretenders after my husband saw a tiny article on an interior page of the regional newspaper a couple of months ago. But, however one finds out about things, this is not a month to be bored. There's something happening somewhere almost every day.
Now, to prepare today's plentiful, seafood lunch, and listen to the bagpipes when they pass by.
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