San Anton!

San Anton is celebrated every year in Torre del Compte by having a bonfire in the Plaza Mayor on the Friday evening, it's just what is needed for a chilly night. The bonfire is massive with olive trees, not branches, being burned.

To see any photo full size just click left on it.

A couple of hundred people from the village including visitors gathered around the bonfire and enjoyed the freshly fried pork bocadillos with wine and this year, with pizza, cake and pieces of chocolate.


Traditionally, a pig is butchered and the various joints are raffled.


The following morning, Saturday, the bonfire is still going.


A mass is held in the church for San Anton then his statue is paraded around the village. To see parts of the procession, follow the link to YouTube below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S1_c-4fixc&feature=channel



The procession is accompanied by a brass band...


...and the same band lead the "devils" to everyone's house...


...where they are given various foods and bottles of wine to take away, later to be auctioned.


Ours is the last house in the village to be visited. This year we had made two Shepherd's Pies for the auction.


Rosi leads the auction, a feat of endurance as it takes over 4 hours for the dishes of food to be sold back to the peñas to be eaten that evening. Our 2 Shepherd's Pies raised 116 euros and 2600 euros was made overall. The funds go towards the organisation and running of village events for the year ahead.


Lola won part of the butchered pig in the raffle - it included the head, trotters and back bone with the tail.


Following tradition, all parts of the pig are eaten apart from the squeak!

Snow + wind = drifts!

It snowed lightly all day yesterday, (snowy drizzle), but during the night the wind got up and rearranged the snow! So for comparison, here are a couple of photos taken in the same places as those yesterday.

Above is the nísperos tree but much deeper in snow.

Today the fountain seems even more dejected and has lost it's base!

This morning I dug a path to the front gate - the snow is easily 46 cms deep on the pathway. The mayor has been up the road from the village in his tractor with his "snow plough" to clear it.

La ermita as seen from our front porch this morning.

It's snowing (again)

Three weeks ago we had snow - see the blog entry for December 14th 2009. That snow lasted almost a week without snowing any more as it was so cold then. Since then it has been reasonably mild, we haven't had a frost, with only a couple of wet days. We have been very lucky as in some regions of Spain, mainly to the south of the country, it has been raining non-stop causing extensive flooding. However, the snow which has covered the U.K. in the last few days has worked it's way down through France and has reached us.


The small tree in the photo above is a nísperos. Click HERE to find out more about the fruit. It flowered in the late autumn, (and was very fragrant), and the fruit is developing over the winter in order to be eaten in the spring.


Also in the garden we have a couple of very large agave. Click HERE to learn more about them. These plants seem to endure the cold spells during winter and of course relish the heat of the summers.


As usual, the ermita looks magnificent as the backdrop in any circumstance...


...but the fountain looks a little dejected in the snow!

Currently it is just drizzling snow, (I'm sure the Inuit indians have a name for that). However, the forecast is for it to clear in the next few days. We certainly hope so. We've already had our snow for this season and people say it's only likely to snow in this area once every ten years! Make that every winter for the last 5 since we got here!

3 Kings or Los tres Reyes

The eve of the 5th January is the time all the children here have been waiting for as it is on this evening that the 3 kings bring the presents as they did with their gold, frankincense and myrrh over 2000 years ago. Rather than travel by camel, in Torre del Compte they arrive on a trailer pulled by a tractor.

Click left on any photo to see it full size. *

The trailer is followed by everyone carrying a lit torch from the church to the hall adjoining the bar/restaurant.

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Here, the torches are extinguished and everyone enters the hall...

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...where the kings and their pages hand out the presents to those people whose names are called out.

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Not only do the children get presents!

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After, a supper dish with friends is well received.

As we were looking in a shop window earlier in the day, we noticed the toy gun above. Hopefully the stimulation it provides is not caused by shooting people!

Photos marked * are by Floyd.