The summer solstice coincides with the festival of San Juan, which I stumbled on last year. Parts of the large car park were sectioned off during several days of preparation and a pile of timber with an effigy tied to a flag post were assembled. My neighbour, Juan, invited Laurie and I over for dinner, to celebrate his saint’s day with friends. We had a lovely time, arrived late, as I always seem to arrive early and try not to, and ate sardines with wine, vino casero, made by one of the guests. I asked him what his wine harvest was for that year. 500-1000 bottles, he relied. ‘Ah, so do you sell it?’ ‘No! We drink it with friends!’ Blimey. A friend who lives in the mountains also makes wine from the grapes on their land. This is a novelty to me but its commonplace. A weekend of harvesting and crushing the grapes is a family affair with neighbours mucking in and around 150 litres produced.
Juan’s meal lasted into the early hours and by the end I couldn’t tell if everyone was speaking Spanish or Galician but it didn’t matter as I can only follow one person at a time and the cacophony of a joyful meal is a non-starter. There was an involved conversation about slaughtering your own cockerels, a little juicy gossip about which neighbours to avoid and that was as far as I got.
Juan mentioned to Laurie that most of the young people in the town gather on the beach for San Juan so around midnight he headed off, wandering home at 7am after making some Galician friends and keeping the party going all night. The beach was packed with bonfires, people and music; the place to be, as Juan had said. I love this routine, with all night parties being the norm and all ages crawling home at dawn (written from my bed at 10pm…).
The festival of San Juan is 24 June, but it’s on the eve that the celebrations take place, as it did in my town, with bonfires across the country and gatherings mostly on beaches. It marks the start of the summer, among other things…a biggie on the Spanish calendar and a chance to throw out the old and bring in the new. The Estribela car park not only has the bonfire but a huge stage with local musicians playing all night. A Galician band, Galileo, presented men in gold trousers playing trombones, not falling short of Eurovision standards. Gold lame trousers? More please! This year we misfired by a week and were in Estribela only in time to seeing the bonfire being built and an effigy of a boat and fishermen crowning the top. Damn shame.
