Fiestas half seen or altogether missed.

According to the newspapers, the beaches of Galicia this weekend were, as they say, “a tope”. Photos show people packed into every possible space on the sand. It rather takes the edge of a day on the beach when you can’t move for fear of treading on somebody’s child. Well, it does for me anyway. And then you don’t have room to organise a game of beach cricket (more likely beach volleyball here) or to build an enormous sandcastle and wait for the sea to destroy it.

Somewhere in my collection of photos I have one of the beach at San Sebastián with all the towels and mats and umbrellas in neat rows, parallel lines even. Well, they do say the basques are a very orderly nation. Oops, did I say nation? That’s rather sensitive term to use these days. We really a word that means belonging to a particular region, something like “regionalidad” perhaps. If “nación” can give you “nacionalidad” then “regionalidad” from "región” seems quite logical.

Be that as it may, the overcrowding at the beaches probably explains the absolute peace and quiet around here over the weekend. Normally you can hear the sound of children playing, football games going on and such like. Throughout most of Saturday and all of Sunday there was barely a murmur. I don’t think there were ever more that four people in or around the pool at a time. It was rather like belonging to an exclusive club.

I said it was quiet and peaceful and this was true until late evening when pops and bangs and crashes started, very loud ones at that. Looking out of the window we could see a truly spectacular fireworks display, looking as though it might be over towards Samil. As there had been an airshow there this weekend with planes drawing hearts in the sky with their vapour trails, it seemed like a reasonable supposition. It really was very impressive and went on and on and on. And then, not long after the smoke had cleared from that end of town it started again across the bay in Cangas. So we had two rather fine displays in one night.

This morning my panadera, an excellent source of information about all kinds of things, commented on how crowded the beaches had been and went on to say that it had been a busy day all round. There was Princess Elena in Vigo, the airshow over Samil and, of course, there were then the fireworks at Bouzas. So that explained the first lot of fireworks we saw. She went on to say that, of course it was the Fiesta del Carmen and that the Virgen del Carmen is, as everyone knows, the patron saint of fishermen. Now, I already knew the second “of course”, the bit that everyone knows. They revere the Virgen del Carmen in the south of Spain as well for the same reason and organise romerías in her honour. I just didn’t know the timing of the feast day. So I went and did a little investigating.

It turns out that the actual date of the Fiesta del Carmen is the 16th of July but they usually celebrate it on the Sunday closest to that date. Many places organise processions through the fishing port with the statue of the Virgen del Carmen paraded through the streets. There is usually a “naval” parade or kind of pilgrimage of fishing boats on the water as well, which may explain why there were so many boats out and about late on Friday evening, which was the 16th. Often the Fiesta del Carmen coincides with the third Sunday in July which just happens to be the Fiesta de Bouzas. And this latter fiesta culminates in a huge firework display, visible form almost all over Vigo and which we were able to watch from our window, certainly seeing all the biggest explosions of light up above all the buildings.

Apparently the Fiesta de Mejillones ( the Spanish do love food related fiestas) also takes place on the third Sunday in July up in Castrelos park. As I am rather fond of eating a nice plate of mussels, it’s rather a pity I missed that one.