One of the questions now being asked, now the local fiestas, celebrations, concerts, rallies, expositions and sporting events are largely over, is this:
Who exactly do they benefit?
The apocryphal story from the mid-sixties is told of my mother stomping down to the main square from our apartment by the church wearing her slippers, dressing gown and a hand bag – with which she slugged the mayor shouting ‘turn the music down, I’m trying to sleep’.
In those days, there’d be a few strings of bunting, a local pop band, the bar doing a brisk trade, and the old deaf-and-dumb lady, la muda, selling cigarettes (single, or a half- or full pack), along with Bazooka Joe bubble-gum and wax matches, cerillas from a tray hanging from her shoulders. The families would dance together – small children up to the oldest grannies, all holding hands and bobbing around. There were songs like La Chica Ye Ye or the grisly Las flechas del Amor…
Brandy was three cents a tot. A small glass of a kind of red wine which would make one’s teeth rot was even cheaper.
They were different times. The only visitors would be family who had emigrated to Barcelona or France or Germany. I remember a family known as los marseilleses, who would come for a few days around that time in their Citröen Ami, look down their noses at their country-cousins, and then disappear again.
There’s the World Day of the Tourist coming up in late September (when they’ve all gone home again), but in our town, neither this nor the non-existent Day of the Foreign Resident are pencilled in. No celebration as such, even if we are here all year long putting money into the economy. Mind you – I think there’s another Saint’s day which pops up around then.
These days, as we’ve all seen (only too vividly) the fiestas are a joy for the shop-keepers who will obligingly stay open until late, but there’s not much pleasure for the locals. Even if one does attend, and has a pricey beer at the metal chiringuito raised in the square (next to the deafening dance-band), who ya gonna talk too? Who ya gonna dance with? So, what with the visitors all enjoying their last few days of the holidays, the instant traditions taking up the usual parking spaces (medieval market anyone?), the far-from cheap drinks and tapas or the ride on the roundabout, I’ll take vanilla.
They’ve even extended them an extra day or two, since one can never have enough fun.
In the old days, maybe a neighbour owned a black and white TV and would kindly leave his window open for the curious, at least for the football game, but now everyone has a huge flat-screen with a hundred channels and a fridge full of beer. Why go out, say the vecinos, when one can be dazzled at home for free?
It comes down to this – a local event can be for the local people, or, if it’s the summer and you are in one of Spain’s ‘Most Beautiful Villages’, then it’s for the business-folk and the tourists. The visitors will all have to sleep somewhere – and for that we have the Airbnb hosts and the hotels, all rubbing their hands.
The Residents don’t stay in them; and for that matter, they don’t buy souvenirs either – making us very disappointing as customers.
And if we do need to drive into the centre to join the festivities and see the fireworks, where can we park that's not a half-hour walk away?
So if something is a bit expensive, yet perceived as cheap by the tourists, then that’s the price of a fiesta without the people it is meant to be for (and, one way or another, who paid for the music and the bunting).
Or who knows? Perhaps we are just getting old.
Meanwhile, and sad to relate, there’s no one left prepared to stomp down to the fiesta at three in the morning, waving her handbag, to tell the mayor to go and pull the effing plug.