We have been to a couple of Fiesta’s recently. Firstly a Moors and Christians, then the Fogueres of San Juan.
Although different, to some degree they are the same. Local clubs spend the year preparing for the fiesta and then bring out their wares and parade them. It involves very bright costumes, lots of music (normally a marching wind band) all supported by lots of well-earned eating and drinking.
At the Moors and Christians each “club” prepares an army of one side or the other and on the day they “parade” around the town showing their colours, sometimes shooting guns, sometime acting out playlets. The parade is thrilling as it passes, with the beat of the drums vibrating through your body. Colours assail the eye sensors. It’s generally a jolly good show. The shooting of the guns needs ear plugs, and went on for hours and is very very loud.
The second fiesta we saw is the “Fogueres of San Juan”. We only saw parts of this as it goes on for about a week. Each club builds a statue somewhere in the city. Statue is not the correct word, these are papier-maché works of art that stand as tall as a 2 storey building and are scenes and stories in characters. Look at some of the photos. As we wandered along Alicante on Saturday you came across band after band (wind bands normally) of musicians who seem to randomly start to march down a crowded street playing. The centre is closed to traffic and is a total mayhem of people pushing and shoving to get from A to B in no order whatsoever. Roads although closed are taken up by fenced-off restaurants and bars each belonging to one of the groups. Some are open to public most are not. It’s crazy, but fun, just so vibrant and alive. Then at 2pm they light the fire crackers, a 10 minute blast of fireworks that bang and screech but have no colour. Then of course comes time to eat. The evening kicked of with a bit of folk dancing then onto the main parade. 2 hours of colour and music. By midnight that is all finished and it’s down to the beach to find a foot square and light a beach fire and sit and drink with friends. Sunday we only went into town in the evening to see the lighting of the fires, ie the burning of all those statues. It starts at midnight with one firework (palm tree) fired from the castle on the hill.
As we pushed through the crowd to get a viewing position we had to stand back as the band was making its way to the front. This is in a crowd so thick that it’s hard to move and the band marched through it while playing, headed up by their queen, to dance in front of the statue. Each statue is lit depending on the availability of fire engines. The statues are in squares in the town and the fire services have to hose the buildings and the people down to stop them burning.
Lots of photos here