¡FIESTA! Day one

To celebrate 700 years of this area being part of the domain of the church of Zaragoza one of the things going on is a display of sacred art which has already been shown at 4 of the local villages. The display in the ermita de San Juan coincides with the fiesta here in the village and a talk and PowerPoint presentation by the local expert was aranged to start at 5:00pm. Because the ermita has no electricity we provided it from our house via a long extension lead. The talk was very good and we even understood parts of it as you could see what the speaker was talking about as he indicated details with his laser pointer and even acted out various acts with copious gestures. We are going to revisit the display later this week with Lola who is going to give us detailed information about each statue and painting.


Straight after the talk we made our way to the cooperativa ground where each peña* (see "¡FIESTA! minus 1" for information on the peña) were cooking sausages (chorizos) to be served in bread. Although the photo looks rather like a scene from a disaster movie, it was all very organised.

There must have been at least 200 people eating their sausage rolls and drinking.

After everyone has eaten their fill, it's off to do a round of the peñas for a drink at each. The only catch is that on the way round the village to the various peñas, the villagers who have returned to their houses throw water on the passers by, some use buckets, others hosepipes. We experienced this last year and after a while everyone is soaking - if you aren't, one of your friends who is, runs up to you and gives you a big hug. What fun!