Festa Major

When planning our trip back to the US I saw that 29 June was the major festival for the town. It seemed like a good idea to make sure we stuck around for that. I didn't know much about it, but assumed it was something like Village Venture, which has organizational booths, food, artists' booths, and a parade. I was completely wrong!!

The festival is more than four days long! Streets are closed a week ahead of time in
order to build a temporary restaurant (shown here just before the festival started).

One night (about 11:30pm) traditional Spanish was being played.

Another night there were flamenco dancers performing.

Thursday's activities, organized by different organizations, included a Settlers of Catan (board game) tournament, rhythmic gymnastics demonstration, and a graffiti art project. There is also a Frank Sinatra tribute band performing at 11:15 p.m.

Does 11:15 p.m. sound late for a concert? Hah! Check out these events
that start at 3 a.m.! Glad I don't live near these venues! 

A park near us is the sport zone and activities include

table tennis, chess, flag tag, climbing, KanJam (made in the USA, it says, but it was new to me), bicycle course (bicycles, helmets, and lice protectors provided), gymnastic demonstrations, basketballs to borrow, tandems to borrow, and more. This was just one park, one tiny section of the festival.

We made our way over to the monastery for the traditional celebration.  My favorite part was 

after the people (including a monk?) gave the warning shots

there were simultaneous devil fire people, 

human towers, and giants dancing amid the confetti.

In this video you can see the giants dancing and the woman is holding a fan. Each year the fan has a different design, which is revealed just before the dance. Afterward pairs of children have their turn dancing, including their own fan and bouquet. Because it was so crowded we did not stick around to see the adults dancing. 

If only we were here one more year I would know where to stand ahead of time to get a good view. The truth is there is so much going on that it is not possible to see everything!