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DANNY ROBINS' TRAVEL GUIDE: SPANISH FESTIVALS
|12:29 UK time, Thursday, 17 June 2010
This week Danny started his guide to festivals of the world - he started with Spain, naturally, and here's what he had to say....
With Glastonbury just a week away, we're properly into festival season. So, we're going to use the Indie Travel Guide to check out what's on offer around the globe in a new strand called Around The World in 80 Festivals. This week, we're starting with Spain.
I don't know if there's any way of scientifically proving it, but I have a theory that Spain has more festivals than any other country.
Spain's a great place to go to a music festival. They have most of the same bands you'd see at an English festival but it's nice and sunny and often by the sea. They can pretty much guarantee it won't rain at a Spanish festival and, if it does, as we all know, the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
As well as music festivals the Spaniards love their religious festivals. And often these religious occasions are an excuse for some truly bizarre happenings. There must be something in the Spanish psyche that likes a big party but needs to find a reason for it. More on those later.
MUSIC FESTIVALS
Well, kicking off today is the Sonar Festival which we talked about when we covered Barcelona a couple of months back. That's from the 17th to the 19th and is mainly electronic acts Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, Jonsi and The Chemical Brothers amongst others.
Of course the big one that everyone talks about is Benicassim. It's 15th to 18th July this year.
Benicassim is a small beach town between Valencia and Barcelona. Everything starts late which suits the Spanish weather. The first bands start playing at 6pm, headliners go on at 1am and DJs play till 6am. Then you can sleep in during the day (or at least until you can't bear being in a hot tent anymore).
Having said all that about the perfect Spanish weather, 2009's festival was actually cut sort because of freakish 'extreme weather', so the organisers will be doing their darndest to make sure 2010 is a cracker. They've got Goldfrapp, Ian Brown, Klaxons, Kasabian, The Courteeners, Mumford and Sons, Vampire Weekend and many many more... If you go, make sure you check out Spanish band Cola Jet Set. I think they're rather good.
There used to also be Summercase, a July festival that happened simultaneously in Barcelona and Madrid - you might remember it's where there was a big fight between John Lydon and his road crew and Kele from Bloc Party, Ricky from Kaiser Chiefs and Yannis from Foals.
They didn't run last year though because of the recession and it looks like they're not running again - the website seems to be dormant now - if anyone knows any different let us know.
STRANGE FESTIVALS
Be chased by bulls...
I suppose the most famous Spanish festival is probably the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Like pretty much all the festivals I'm going to talk about, it's tied to a religious celebration and is officially called the Festival of San Fermin.
It lasts for a week every year from July 7th to 14th (it's always the same dates).
It's been running for centuries and the first accounts of foreigners going over and joining in date back to the 18th century. It's became really internationally famous thanks to Ernest Hemmingway who wrote about it in his book The Sun Also Rises in 1927.The bull run takes place at 8am every morning during this week. The 'course' is 825 metres and takes about 3 minutes to run. But it's a pretty dangerous 3 minutes. As if being chased by an angry bull weighing over a hundred stone wasn't bad enough, you've also got to contend with the massive crowds of runners all around you, many of whom will be pretty drunk. Over the years since 1924, 15 people have died and over 200 have been injured. Even just last year, one man was gored to death and nine others were injured.
Despite that's it's massively popular so it's worth booking your accommodation well in advance (some sites recommend 12 months in advance) - an alternative option is to stay in nearby San Sebastian.
Baby jumping...
Marginally safer, and you could certainly take the kids - Spain's nuttiest festival has to be the Baby Jumping Festival in Castillo De Murcia near Burgos in Northern Spain.
This is linked to the Catholic Festival of Corpus Christi and quite frankly has to be seen to be believed. Babies are laid on the ground in a line (don't worry they get a little bed to lie on) and grown men jump over them rather in the manner of Evel Knieval jumping over buses. The men are apparently dressed as the Devil, though in all the photos I've seen they look a bit like Elvis. Apparently this cleanses the babies of all evil doings. Yeah right. Apparently the Pope has asked the local priests to distance themselves from it. I'm not surprised.
Sadly we've just missed it for this year as it was June 6th but book ahead for next year why don't you - if you're not yet a parent, you've still got time to change that.
Food fight!
This is La Tomatina - the tomato chucking festival. It's always on the last Wednesday of August every year in the town of Bunol near Valencia. Basically, people chuck a lot of tomatoes at each other - if you haven't seen the pictures, they're spectacular.
No one knows how it started but it's happened every year since the Second World War. It was banned under Franco but then came back with a vengeance after his death. 20-50,000 tourists turn up for it. Women wear white and men wear no shirts. About 150,000 tomatoes are chucked every year apparently.
If you don't fancy tomatoes but still want to chuck stuff at people, you could check out the water fight festival in Lanjarón near Granada on June 24th or better still the wine fight ('Batalla del Vino') in Horo, La Rioja on June 29th. It being the Rioja region, there's plenty of wine to fight with.
For something all together less nice how about the ant throwing that goes on in Laza, Galicia at Carnival time (February) or, even worse, the Battle of the Dead Rat (yes they throw them at each other), in the Valencian town of El Puig during the fiesta of San Pedro Nolasco (January).
Last year I went to the Festival of Santa Marta de Riberteme in Las Nieves (also know as As Neves) in Galicia. It's a festival of 'near death experiences' - people who have come close to death in the preceding 12 months are paraded through the town in open top coffins. It's pretty eerie. Some pilgrims also crawl around the town on their knees (it's about a 45 minute circuit).
Here's a good site for more info on Spanish Festivals.
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