Letter from Spain #17
A public holiday, the Fiesta Mayor and the 'churreria' ...
Mid-August, specifically 15 August, is the time of the year when all work in Spain (unless it is tourism or hospitality related) really does come to a standstill. You can see and feel it grinding to a halt a few days beforehand. As it’s a prelude to many towns and villages celebrating their annual Fiesta Mayor (Festa Major here in Catalonia), everyone looks happy and excited, from grannies to toddlers … and the churreria truck gets wheeled out, too.
It’s mainly because 15 August is a public holiday - a day to celebrate the ‘Assumption of the Virgin’, which according to Christians, commemorates the day that the Virgin Mary entered heaven. What it really means is that those not already on an August vacation have no choice but to join the holiday crowds.
As this year the ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ falls on a Tuesday, the Monday will become a puente ‘bridge’ to the national holiday, so no-one in any office across Spain will answer the phone or respond to your emails until after midweek, believe me. La Liga football has kicked off again, too, but otherwise not much else will happen in Spain until after 1 September, even though parliament reconvenes from Thursday 17 August to start the process of trying to decide who might be Prime Minister … but let’s talk about that again in a few weeks.
For now, the churreria truck has made an appearance on the promenade in my hometown of Sitges, too - looking like a naff fairground trailer but always attracting long queues for its crinkly, crispy-fried sticks of churros (xurros), coated with cinnamon and sugar and dipped in xocolata …
We’re now also building up to the Festa Major here in Sitges - the Sant Bartomeu festival which runs from 19-26 August (yes, an entire seven days). Actually, we really have two Festa Majors - as the main church celebrates Sant Bartomeu and Santa Tecla, with the latter festival taking place from 14-25 September (as always, overlapping with La Mercè festival in Barcelona from 22-25 September). So, we have a lot of serious partying to do yet, before the end of the summer …
I first came to Sitges on a holiday back in 1983, then returned many times over the years (and especially while working in Madrid for 10 years), before coming here to live permanently from 2007, after accepting a new job in Barcelona.
The reason I mention all that is because my initial and often blurred memories of the Festa Major had always been the spectacular firework display, the brilliantly-named ‘Castell de Foc’ (fire castle, not fuck) that always takes place here on 23 August, alongside the church at La Fragata.
The first time I saw it in full was in 1993, with my ex-wife and two young kids, and we only sat down on the beach just before 11pm and gazed towards La Fragata out of curiosity, because everyone else was doing so. What followed was simply incredible. I was once told that the man responsible for the firework display at the Beijing Olympics did a rehearsal for it at Sitges … and I can believe it.
I think for many people, many tourists and visitors, the firework display is the Festa Major - but it was only when I came to live here permanently that I realised there was so much more to it all. And they take it seriously, put it that way.
As with the churreria truck on the promenade, different groups, teams or collas that get really involved with the correfocs - the ‘fire runs’ with devils and dragons - have started to sell their drac and diablo designed T-shirts in the Plaça Cap de la Vila, in the centre of the village (see photos below). Every year I’ve wanted to buy one but have always assumed they’re for some kind of elite members’ club only. I should ask, I know, and I will ask - but it’s the type of thing that always reminds me that despite all my good intentions of learning Spanish, and trying to learn Catalan (but understanding and reading it OK), I’ll always be a foreigner here … a guiri.
To be honest, I think it was my sons who made me realise there was much more to the Festa Major in Sitges than the Olympic-style ‘fire castle’. Once we moved here and they quickly got involved with the local rugby club, I’d watch them over the years with their mates buying brand new white T-shirts and then quickly destroying them. They’d cut off the sleeves and paint their nicknames on the back, alongside dragons and devils, before heading out in their straw hats to drink and dance wildly in the fire runs until gone 4am, often for 4-5 days on the trot. Happy days …
The Barcelona Connection - Research
For those of you following this blog’s research behind The Barcelona Connection, I said that this week we’d look at Inspector Vizcaya and Marta Soler in Chapter 14 …
There’s not much to say about the location, as it’s still the service station described in some of the previous chapters below. I’ll say that Vizcaya, however, originally from the Basque Country, is one of my favourite characters - and he’s certainly the most level-headed (although not as sharp as Marta Soler). There are some superb Spanish actors that could play Vizcaya in the TV series (which we’ll discuss more soon). I’d be over the moon, for example, if it was perhaps Luis Tosar or Javier Cámara …
Previous links to my research notes are here:
Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16 (the painting - the possible study of The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí).
Chapters 10 and 12 in Letter from Spain #15 (Isabel Bosch and Lieutenant Trias).
Chapters 8 and 11 in Letter from Spain #14 (Benjamin at Girona Airport and finding the Marqueses’ home in La Bisbal).
Chapter 7 in Letter from Spain#12 (Séverin and Jürgen).
Chapter 5 in Letter from Spain#11 (Elena in Girona).
Chapters 3-4 in Letter from Spain#9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead, plus Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted).
Chapter 2 in Letter from Spain#8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà).
Chapter 1 in Letter from Spain#7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station).
The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & Events
On Thursday 28 September I am doing an event at The Secret Kingdoms bookstore in Madrid, chatting about The Barcelona Connection and A Load of Bull with Ann Louise Bateson, radio producer, former BBC contributor and presenter of the English language programme, ‘Madrid Live’. Drinks and snacks will also be served, and although the event is free, places will be limited - so if you’re interested in coming along, then it would be wise to reserve your place by clicking on this Eventbrite link. It will be a fun evening and I hope to see you there!
Another date for the diary, this time in Barcelona. On Saturday 28 October at 2.30pm, I will be participating in a roundtable discussion hosted by Barcelona City Council for their annual International Community Day, with the topic being ‘Discovering & Enjoying Barcelona through Literature’. The event will take place at the Museu Marítim de Barcelona. More details in due course.
As soon as I have news about a possible event at The Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida, I will post details about it here.
Links to reviews & articles
Here’s the link for a review of The Barcelona Connection that came out in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.
Here’s a link to a review of the book published by the Spain in English online newspaper.
Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.
You can also click here for the latest reviews on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads and at Barnes & Noble.
The book is available on Amazon or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from. It can also be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.
For professional enquiries and foreign rights for The Barcelona Connection, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.