La Feria 4-11 post 16

Welcome back,

cant blow these pics up... (all taken by Danny)
Arriving in Sevilla
Last weekend my roomate Danny and I took a bus to La Feria (translated "the fair") in Sevilla which has a population of about 700,000. Sevilla is about a two and a half hour ride from Granada, and the busride is worth it (13 €) because the countryside is gorgeous. We decided to take this trip because we where invited by the group of spanish girls we met in Barclona (see the post). One of the girls, Maria, shares a flat with some roomates, and invited Danny and I to stay there.

Anyway the first night the chicas gave us a quick tour of the city center which consists of the famous Toro de Oro (tower of gold), the cathedral, the castle, and the Plaza de Toros (bullfighting ring). The city center was pretty busy because bullfights are held every day during La Feria. I still plan on attending a bullfight in the future, so there will be more about that later. Also, our group here in Granada will be visiting Sevilla next weekend, so I wont touch history or city architecture yet.

The Festival

is a week long, and all the Spaniards rant about how the Feria always, always gets rained on. We had the luck of arriving to sunny weather. The town was full of women wearing the traditional Feria dress, (which is a "flamenco" dress), also the women wear a large flower atop thier heads. Typical of what one would see during flamenco dances I think. The men wear a suit with a broad brimmed had (which I thought resembled Zorro´s), and ride around on horses. There must be strong horsemanship traditions in this region because there were horsedrawn buggies and men on horses everywhere. My Grandpa loves horses, and I thought that he would be amazed at how well the horses were behaved in in the midst of thousands of people. The buggies are driven right in the middle of traffic, with cars and noisy mopeds zipping by, yet the horses didnt really seem to care...

The Feria is held in a certain area of the city. There is a huge square block of richly decorated "casetas" (glorified tents). Every caseta has a bar inside, a dancefloor, and an area to sit and socialize. The only problem is that the majority of the casetas are private, and for a foriegner to get into one of them is pretty tough if you dont know anyone. The dancing seems to be the most important part of the festival. Next to the casetas were carnival rides.

I have been curious lately why the cities and towns in Spain have all of these festivals. What I have gathered is this: Historically, the culture of spain was heavily ifluenced by religion. Each separate town had a declared Patron Saint, and each year, the town would hold a religious holiday in honor of the Saint. It seems to me that the religions influence upon Spanish culture has dwindled recently (past century), and while the holiday remains, it has become much more secular. It seems that since these festivals are now more or less secular, each town has had the freedom to define thier own holiday however they see fit. Thus each town has thier unique week of holidays. (input would be appreciated on this)

The Casetas

Are decorated very nicely and play Flamenco music that the Sevillanos dance to. It appears that the dance is more or less the same for the man and the women, and is pretty dramatic. The typical drink of the festival was something called Rebujito, which is chilled white whine mixed with sprite. The people drink the stuff in oversized shot glasses. A pitcher costed 6.50 €.

The night

Is a lot longer in Spain than what I am used to. We left the festival and rode the public bus at about 6 a.m., and I was surprised to see a pretty good cross section of the society using the public transportation at that hour. I was told the the party spans a week and never stops once in the seven days.

Really cheap trip that only cost about 60€ for the whole weekend with transpo