Fiesta!
For the first couple of weeks, as the group were getting to know one another, we did lots of exploring together and went for drinks most nights. We’ve also had a couple of moon parties on the roof terrace of our apartment with drinks and singing. To me, this was a party. It turns out though, that we Brits had a thing or two to learn from the Spanish about fiestas.
Towards the end of our second week, we were told about a Spanish white wine festival being held in Cordoba and we decided to make this our cultural activity for Thursday evening. After a little confusion about the tickets, we gained entry to the festival with several drinks tickets attached to them, and were each given a glass. We took these tickets up to the many stalls for our free drinks. We all reassembled after making our selections and were surprised to discover that each of us had somehow selected sherry. It turns out that this typical local white wine is actually sherry! None of us had ever drunk sherry in such remarkable quantities before. We had a hilarious evening and got home at around 7am. Work the next day was a bit of a struggle! Whilst I still love the stuff, most of the group have vowed never to drink sherry again.
In Cordoba, there seems to be a party for everything. At the art school, we had a whole week of celebrations associated with International Book Week. This was before May kicked in…a whole month of parties in Cordoba.
Even towards the end of April, we went to a couple of brilliant warm up parties in courtyards to get us ready for May. More getting home at 6am and being informed that in May in Cordoba, you don’t sleep.
On the 1st of May we went to see a small May Day protest march followed by The Battle of the Flowers. This involved a parade of floats festooned with flowers, and women and children wearing traditional dress. They threw carnations at the spectators who threw them back at the floats and a huge flower fight ensued. Completely bonkers and a lot of fun!
The first week of May also sees The Festival of the Crosses. Each parish has their own large flower-covered cross with an associated bar selling drinks and tapas. There is music and everybody dances. It’s wonderful to see how everyone here enjoys Flamenco dancing. We’ve had a go at imitating it but I’m sure we’re getting it extremely wrong! Nobody seems to mind though as it’s all about having fun. It was fun wandering around Cordoba and finding more and more of these Cross parties. You basically couldn’t avoid them. Wherever you turned, there was another party. They all had their own individual character, some seething with people, some mostly populated by young girls in hot pants, some with stages and a band, and some that were relatively gentile (we avoided the two extremes).
We’re now into The Festival of the Patios! This is rather more interesting than it sounds since a patio here is a beautiful courtyard full of flowers. Families and businesses work hard all year to make their patios as beautiful as possible for May when they open them up to the public. Each official patio site is marked with a couple of little fir trees in red velvet pots either side of the door which gives you full permission to go in and have a snoop. It’s an insight into all the oases scattered across the city. Many of the patios also have bars and tapas, and Flamenco music or dancing performances.
The main party is at the end of May when Feria hits town. The site is already going up and seems to be an enormous fun fair party that goes on all week. I’ll let you know how it goes!
