Who wouldn't like a town party? Love letter "wide open"
WE DREAM OF VILLAGE FESTIVALS IN 2021...
In this 'strange' summer... of NO lockdown... but still not 100% “normal”, we have rediscovered one of those plans that we took for granted and that, year after year, were burned into our retinas and in the liver: we love deeply and we have missed the town festivals very much.
The festival The Panorama Orchestra. The disco-mobile. The liter at its point at a rate of €3 per unit…
If you have “a town” in your own right or one by adoption, you know what we are talking about.
ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF A GOOD VILLAGE FESTIVAL
Each patron saint's holiday has its peculiarities but, to qualify as an authentic town festival, it must meet each and every one of the following requirements, in chronological order:
- The tournament. Football or any real or invented competition. Where the local team goes on a spree and those who come from the next town cause some trouble. And where the local optician or butcher shop, which sponsors the sarao, gives a pair of glasses or a string of blood sausages to the MVP (Chicho, the one from Isabel).
- The fair. With its horses, the fighting bull, the octopus and other attractions with more danger than sneezing with diarrhea... and which delight children, parents and young people in the early afternoon, when The peach from the previous night begins to lighten.
- The popular orchestra. That El Tiburón sings to you the same as La Quinta Estación and showers everything with frilly shirts and OT-type choreographies (the original). For some reason all the orchestras in Spain are still installed in 2001 (and we #putoflipa).
- The festival. With two marked phases: a) playing reggaeton, perreistic and Latin hits; and b) with the stale classics that EVERYONE claims to hate during the remaining 11 months of the year but LOVES unconditionally in August. Up the pasodoble and paquito the chocolatier!
- The post-verbena. Where native traditions already operate: hardcore music, dust of summer love or winter snow among the bushes, bingo at the town hall,... . So until dawn.
HOW TO MERGE AND BE ONE WITH THE PEOPLE'S FESTIVITIES
Going from tourist to honorary member of a town festival requires effort and dedication. If we had to summarize them, there would be 3 keys:
A peña, choco or local youth club... what is it and how do you recognize it? Well, it is simply an abandoned garage, a construction shed with a corrugated roof or under the bottom of some business... where the girls (and not so girls) gather to get dressed up as Filipinos before, during and after the day's event. You will recognize them because inside they house:
- To peñistas or members of the peña, all dressed in the same way: with a colored overalls, t-shirt, hat or random costume and with a very vague name
- A stolen and/or improvised bar where kegs of beer are tapped hour after hour and where EVERYONE is invited to drink. A gnawed and unstitched mattress that silences too many of those stories that happen after 05:00 AM
#2 Learn the charangas
Or popular songs. Each town and region has its own . You don't need to memorize them first. Humming them out loud is enough...
Breakfast is served at 08:00 when you return from the festival (broken eggs, crumbs and three jugs before going to sleep...so that everything soaks in well)
Around 3:00 p.m. it's time for the ranch: it can also be popular stew or paella... but the concept implies that everyone eats on plastic plates and from the same bowl ALWAYS.
As the plan is usually in the sun, we recommend you take the Handsomefyer SUN so that only the hot weather gets you and not the sunstroke.
HANDSOMEFYER SUN
All-in-1 creamer for plans in the sun. Hides pores, smoothes wrinkles, moisturizes, evens skin tone and SPF 50.
Dinner is lighter: a black pudding/chorizo/longaniza sandwich before going to the fair. And to show off your best clothes between the t-shirt and the shorts, at least wear the Handsomefyer XTRA to partially hide the effect of the Minis on your face.
And now the 'dinner' varies between chocolate, potato cone or any fried delicacy that they serve you in the street stalls and that helps you stay on your feet between liter and liter of water with mystery that you drink. Because yes, people drink at town festivals. A lot. At all hours.
HANDSOMEFYER XTRA
All-in-1 creampie with extra coverage. Covers pores and wrinkles, hydrates and evens skin tone.
WE HAVE MISSED YOU SO MUCH (SO MUCH)
We have been waiting for this time of year for 2 years. TikTok has been filled with things like #PuebloFiestas or #Verbena where people evoke, nostalgically, what they always were and what they always will be.And we have not fully recovered. Of the best known, this year San Fermín, La Tomatina, the Semana Grande of Bilbao and San Sebastián, the Battle of Haro Wine,...
But there are beginning to be sprouts of hope: the fairs in Malaga and Almería , some late Fallas in September... or the names of hundreds and hundreds of patron saint festivals in tiny, abandoned towns during the rest of the year, which multiply their population and divide their average old for a few days to the sound of the Kuduro dance.
But if you can, embrace them as if they were the last. Because they are family, they are home, they are ours... and messing with them is anathema. 😉
Siwon
We do cool right!
