Mojácar's Moors and Christians Festival

 It’s the time of the year when some of the pueblos in my small corner of Spain celebrate their various Moors and Christians festivals. How close to marking a factual date, or just because it was otherwise going to be a quiet weekend, is unclear. But apparently in 1488, Mojácar fell to the Christian forces. Next-door Vera on the one side of us and Carboneras just over the mountain on the other side also fell this (or maybe next) weekend some 537 years ago. As I write this, all three towns have been enjoying their processions, fabulous costumes, bands playing waily-waily music and lots of thunder-flashes going off – loud enough to wake the dead. Indeed, to add to the fun, Vera town hall has thrown in a bullfight as well.

And don’t forget, Carboneras has a castle for that extra bit of verisimilitude. 

 The whole idea began down our way in around 1988 (appropriately, the fifth centenary of the final push towards Granada, a ‘reconquista’ which swept through our area in that year). The costumes and celebrations come (usually rented in our case) from the Alicante town of Alcoy, which has apparently been honing its medieval armour since King Jaume of Valencia passed through there with his forces in 1276.

 

Mojácar’s festival is different, according to our recently-invented tradition, in that the Christian captain and the Moorish mayor are said to have sunk their differences over a glass of dandelion tonic down at the Fuente, and agreed that we – or rather they – were all Spaniards together and, by the way and in case you wondered, the road to Granada is over there, just past that algarrobo. As the Town Hall’s blurb puts it ‘…when we tell them of the story of that peaceful surrender of the city, they are surprised. It's a festival without victors or vanquished’.

 

This year, the fiesta had been extended an extra day and now runs Thursday through Sunday. When pueblos find that they are on to a good thing, visitor-wise, they often add an extra day or two. The Almería City’s saint’s day in August, for example, runs for nine days straight.

 

Peculiar that, considering that very few visitors make their way to the Big Al. Their surrender to the Christians, meanwhile, falls rather unfortunately on December 26th – where other, jollier celebrations are already going on.

 

We went up to the village on Thursday evening, to find that things hadn’t really got going. The different hard-board castles or kabilas, or whathaveyous were there, pressed back to back in the reduced area of the pueblo (Mojácar: a small and ancient town perched on a hill), all equipped with the 21st century equivalent of record players. Eight different venues for the seven groups loosely divided into Moors or Christians (generally speaking, the Moors are the PSOE and the Christians are the PP because, even in a small village, one must divide into still smaller peñas to belong).

 

The foreigners? Well some of them have joined in, above all, those who can afford to rent a costume. 

 

I’ve been to a few Moors and Christians festivals over the years. The tinier villages in the mountains may be a bit quieter – with a costumed fellow on horseback declaiming a major chunk of poetry to his be-turbaned antagonist before the hired band lets go with a selection of modern pop songs and we all, locals and those who moved years ago to Almería City but still have a house here, move en masse to the tin chiringuito for a beer and something chewy on the hot-plate. One village popular with the foreigners, Bédar, used to feature a chap on a donkey wrapped in a table-cloth, another wearing the uniform of a military service private soldier seated on a Mobylette, plus someone from the Town Hall to help with the ancient poetry. ‘Avast, thou Moor, for this is a Godly Kingdom…’

 

Gouts of this stuff. Think ‘The Merchant of Venice’. And then cue the fireworks, and down to the bar. 

 

Mojácar on Thursday evening was fairy crowded but the various kabilas hadn’t got going, so we sat in the main square at a table with someone we knew, together with a man from Tipperary, whose accent, alas, was too impenetrable for my poor German companion, plus a very nice lady dressed in a disturbing Goth outfit. To make up the party, there was a large and unchained parrot, who was nodding appreciably in time to the distant drums.

 

After a couple of schooners of gin and a Donner Kebab – Mojácar suddenly has a number of these establishments – we went home (there’s a secret route that the traffic police for some reason haven’t found).

 

For these affairs, I used to wear my old djellaba (a sort of gentleman’s nighty with a hood), a souvenir of a long-ago trip to Morocco. But I can’t find it now, I think it must have gotten thrown out.

 

On the second evening, Friday, we decided to take the bus up to the village – a performance which proved to be painless. We could see cars parked all the way up and all the way down again. Our bus-driver let us off just below the square.

 

By now, the party was well and truly underway. Many townsfolk were in their costumes and several carried with them a type of arquebus (or maybe a hand-cannon) called un trabuco, which, as far as I can see, they will fire off whenever they see a defenceless earhole. The different barracks were doing trade, one with a magnificent group of brass musicians from Alicante wearing fezzes. The wine was flowing and luckily the busses were still running when we finally made our adieus.

 

Saturday was a quiet day for us, with the windows firmly closed – and the air-conditioner on full – to help keep the explosions, bangs, drum-rolls, trumpets and shrieks away.

The last day of the festival was Sunday.

 

We took the bus once again, this time so overcrowded, the driver could barely close the door. We then lounged about for a couple of hours, with a few drinks to refresh ourselves, in keen anticipation of the oncoming parade.

 

Which was fantastic.

 

I think they must rent the costumes from some crafty fellow in Alicante who is making himself a small fortune. They were both beautiful and dramatic. More and more warriors (and princesses and some heavily armed children) passed slowly and regally by, with musicians accompanying each of the seven kábilas.  The whole parade took over ninety minutes and probably had anything up to a thousand participants.

 

Following this stupendous experience, everyone else went home, while we settled on another glass of wine and a bowl of patatas bravas.

 

The Mojácar mayor had this to say:  

 

‘In many other cities, the confrontation is recreated. In Mojácar, we celebrate mutual respect. And that, in these times, is more valuable than ever’.

Pink Wine on the Nekkar

 I was in Baden-Württemberg (south-west Germany) for the past couple of weeks, enjoying excellent weather, good beer and food, while visiting churches, various Schlösser (including a gigantic one in Schwetzingen) and cake-shops. 

I took a boat down the River Neckar in Heidelberg (an astonishingly beautiful city), cycled a hundred kilometres down back-lanes and through small villages (with a luxurious e-bike: it’s like you are always going down-hill) and visited a local zoo (with another cake-shop) and later went to a huge old car, motorbike, plane and tank museum in Sinsheim. 

The Sinsheim museum really is quite a thing. There's a Concorde one can climb inside and also a WW2 U-boat (which must have been quite a bother to obtain since the town is almost 600kms from the sea).

With a couple of obligatory stops in some Biergärten, the occasional schnapps and then another cake or two for good luck (Do watch out for the apfelstrudel!), I had a great trip and now weigh rather a lot. 

My thanks to my kind hostess.

I didn’t (and don’t) think much of Barajas airport. I had to wait there for several hours queuing to get another ticket after my flight from Germany had been delayed by two idiots flying drones over the runways there. Barajas, which has several hundred squatters living in this decidedly uncomfortable airport, was spraying against a plague of bedbugs while I was visiting.

In Spain, we seem to be enjoying some outside weather as well, notably while protesting for this or that. The Good Folk from Madrid for example were spoilt for choice over this past weekend with a pro-Palestine demo, an anti-Sánchez rally and a pro-European march.

Frankly, I would have gone for an ice-cream instead.

Strike a Light, Gov.

 I followed my own advice a few weeks ago and bought a torch and a few cans of baked beans, put a battery in the radio and – what was the other thing?

Ah yes, picked up a Teach-Yourself-Russian primer.

But it’s funny how things turn out.

I was in Kraichgau in Germany this Monday, riding an e-bike along a quiet country lane when the mobile phone went off in the Karrimor – a kind of bicycle side-pack.

These calls – no one I know ever phones me – are usually from one of those scam outfits that either want to sell you something you never realised that you could do without, or worse still, a complete hollow silence from the caller: probably cleaning out your bank account details as you wonder whether to say ‘Yeah?’ or just hang up.

I block ’em when I get ’em, but if I’m doing something else, then I don’t bother to answer.

Who does these days – if someone knows you, they send a message or make a call on WhatsApp.

Pedalling away with Lotte just in front of me, i hear that my mobile is insistently trilling once again.

'Hold on', I call to her.

Long story short, it’s my neighbour in Spain, a campesino called Paco. Salt of the earth, but not always fully up to speed.

‘The power is out’, he said breathlessly.

‘Well there’s fu-’…

‘And in your house too’.

Shit, did I give him a key?

‘Can you call Endesa, the electric company?’ he’s saying.

‘Paco, I’m riding an e-bike, and it’s still going strong, so I reckon I've got more than enough electricity. You call them’.

I get a message some time later, laboriously written by Paco, which says (roughly) ‘there’s no electric on the beach either’.

Lotte has dismounted and is scrolling her phone. ‘It looks like the whole of Spain is out’, she says.

‘Pity the poor buggers trapped in a lift’ I say as we pedal on towards the biergarten.

The Lavatory Bar

I wrote this one back in 2010. It's about The Lavatory Bar (not the Bar Katanga, that came later). But, what with it being Easter, and me in the processions, I thought I'd run it again. The picture is two of the Guardia Civil visiting my dad back in 1970.

.....

In the old days, before the passing of Franco, the bars closed at 1.00am. Most of them no doubt closed a lot earlier, right after the black and white football game on the telly ended, but the bars in the tourist towns at least, would remain open for the boozy foreigners until the bell went. By the late sixties, prices for a gin and tonic had crept up to fourteen pesetas, and a beer cost anything up to a duro – five pesetas. Our town lush, Old Antonio, would patrol the bars in Mojácar on the lookout for a drink, appearing more and more dishevelled after each invitación. ‘Rubio, dame un duro’, he’d whine.

The local bars were dressed in simple stone, marble, slate, tiles and plaster. There might be a calendar for decoration, the obligatory shelf of bottles, Green Fish gin and so on, perhaps a TV or a radio or a juke box – or with luck, all three. Noise was the keynote of a good bar, with the walls rebounding the sound and lifting it on high.

The few foreign bars would be decorated with paintings from local artists (who always attempted to drink for free) and would have the lights on low. Music came from a record player.

By 1.00am, those who wished to continue with the business of drinking would move to our solitary discothèque, run by Felipe, a Frenchman from Casablanca. Felipe would charge a little more for a cubata, the generic name for a mixed drink, but he had a disk jockey and a dance floor. At 2.00am, according to the rules, he’d close the door and pretend to be shut while we finished our drinks.

This could take some time, as the next legal establishment, the Fisherman’s Bar in nearby Garrucha, didn’t open until three.

In those days, the local Guardia Civil had to provide their own transport, which would generally be an old moped. They wouldn’t bother hiding behind a road-sign to catch the occasional drunk driver – they couldn’t stop you without ‘probable cause’ anyway. At best, they might be in the village watching the small car park and helping drivers reverse safely out of their space and away down the hill.

The trip to Garrucha took about fifteen minutes and included a drive through the dust, ruts, or puddles, depending on the season, of the floor of the riverbed, the oddly named ‘Rio de Aguas’ that, in those days, more or less divided the two towns geographically.

Garrucha High Street was and remains a narrow and ugly road that flows straight through the fishing village and away towards Vera and civilization to the north. In those times, it was a two-way street. Halfway down it was the Bar Bichito, a bar with a special licence to open at 3.00am for the fishermen to have an early morning carajillo, a black coffee and brandy. This particular mixture always seemed like a good idea to the inebriates from Mojácar who would order a round as a song began to bubble up from within them.

Hitherto, the drinking had been reasonably quiet, with the music taking the strain, but in the Bichito, fetchingly designed in white tile throughout and known to the foreigners as ‘The Lavatory Bar’, there was no music whatsoever and entertainment had to be found elsewhere. The bar made the ordinary local establishments of the times look positively attractive. The door was on the end and opened into a narrow bar which stretched along in a small 'el' shape parallel to the street. There were two small tables and a few chairs just inside the door, and, if feeling faint, one could always sit outside on the curb. Otherwise, we stood at the chest-high bar (or even higher for some of the vertically challenged local fishermen), blinded by the bright lights and namesake decor and watched, between songs, as Pedro man-handled his one-spout Italian coffee machine. The toilet facilities, a throne with a long drop, were through the back and doubled as a storage room for the beer and soft drinks.

The fishermen and the old municipal cop would look on in a friendly way as the small group of plastered Britons, French, Germans and Americans, depending on the draw, would start on their lengthy repertoire. A family favourite of ours was ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’ (an old song immortalised in the late sixties by the New Vaudeville Band) followed, perhaps, by the popular drunken bawl ‘I’ve Got Sixpence’ or perhaps ‘Bless Em All’. A cockney couple, Pat and Tony Farr, had taught us a number of appropriate songs, such as ‘I’m One of the Ruins that Cromwell Knocked Abaht a Bit’ or ‘I’m Henry the Eighth I Am’ and so on.

More carajillos as Pedro, face pitted with acne, would tell everyone to hsss, to be quiet. People are trying to sleep (apparently).

Things could only get worse as the Rugby Songs were unleashed. Rugby Songs are England’s answer to folk music and run along the lines of ‘My Little Sister Lily’ or ‘They Were Tattered, They Were Torn…’ with lots of lines ending in –uck and so on. Curiously, many of them are set to opera music, which gives the performers a chance to really crank out the key words with enthusiasm. At times, even the extranjeros can be loud.

The ride home was always uneventful, I’m sorry to report. No accidents or arrests. But those were different times. Cheap, basic and fun.