Dressing up!

Today is the Fiesta de la Reconquista, celebrating throwing the French Napoleonic forces outt a couple of hundred years ago. They might well be doing a re-enactment down in the centre of town. However, they might be waiting until the weekend to do that, judging by a poster that a friend of mine posted onto Facebook.

However, there will almost certainly be a re-enactment. They like to get dressed up. Hallowe'en has been adopted here. Then there is usually a big parade for Three Kings Day in January. After that, along comes Carnaval. And in the summer you can hire medieval costumes and go along to the medieval fairs all over the place. And in some places you can get involved in mock battles between Moros y Cristianos, celebrating throwing another lot out of the country, this time the Moors. It's a bit like lots of local branches of the Sealed Knot Society. Any excuse for a bit of fancy dress!

As a result of the fiesta, the supermarket next door is closed. So is the school up the road. No traffic jams up there this morning! In fact the school was closed yesterday as well, "making a bridge" as they say around here. If a fiesta falls on a Tuesday, you take Monday off as well, and if it falls on a Thursday, you take Friday off, making a "bridge" to the long weekend. A very good idea!

It was all quiet down by the bread shop as well. The maze of pedestrian walk ways is still there but the chaps digging up the pavement and laying cables, or whatever it is they are actually doing, have clearly been given the day off. I commented on the quiet and the bread lady declared that she wants to work for that company. They too "made a bridge" yesterday. Not only that but they work very slowly. At ten o' clock in the morning they take a breakfast break (in fairness, they usually start drilling and banging at eight) which goes on for best part of an hour. And, she declared, she watched one the other day who seemed to do no more than shift the same bit of soil back and forth all day.

All in all, she is not impressed. If this work were going on in the centre of town, she assures me, there would be many more workers on task to expedite matters. Maybe so! The whole thing looks like a job creation scheme to me anyway!

So all is quiet. The sun is actually shining and there are relatively few clouds in the sky. Perhaps Spring has arrived after all. And we took advantage of the fine weather to take a walk up to A Guía, or Niño d'Aguia as I should now more properly call it. Along the nicely done Paseo Marítimo, paid for with EU financing. Oops! I wasn't going to mention the EU today.

So it goes.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a festive Tuesday, even if it does feel curiously like Sunday!