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FESTIVAL IN SPAIN:
The Grapes of La Rioja
A gaggle of girls with hair dyed green and their tee shirts
soaked in wine giggled their way past the bodega. Fireworks
exploded in the street. It was the time of year in Northern
Spain when the locals go slightly mad.
The
beginnings of Fiesta had been
evident the evening before as we drove into Logroño, the
main town of the La Rioja area.
The lights of a fun-fair shone
brightly and a Ferris wheel with sparkling bulbs revolved high
into the dark starry night.
It was really late but
smartly dressed families with quite young children played
at the stalls and didn’t head home until the wee sma hours.
We
slept late and woke to join the locals, who were either wearing
red or blue neckerchiefs. We
seemed to be the only tourists, so I decided to ‘blend in’
by investing 300 pts.(£1.30)
in one.
We
followed the crowd through cobbled alleyways and along broad
boulevards. Every
now and then the police held up the traffic
and a mass of Lycra clad cyclists raced round the corners
preceded by police motor cyclists with sirens blaring. Every
club in Logroño gets involved in the Festival of San Mateo. 
The crowd got thicker and we were absorbed into a good natured
mass of young people in the town square.
Until then my idea of a Spanish fiesta had been of a
quiet religious procession parading a sacred statue. This was
nothing like that, there was loud music, dancing and the
chanting of “San
Mateo, San Mateo, San Mateo.”
At noon a rocket was fired,
the music and dancing stopped, and bottles of wine were
shaken and sprayed over everyone.
Flour
bombs were thrown and every one went crazy.
They had a great
time, kiddies sprayed aunts and teenagers became soaked,
then began to resemble the 'living dead' as being wet
they became caked in white flour.
The clever ones came prepared wearing plastic ponchos.
Later
we recovered at a bodega sipping drinks and nibbling at tapas
to the sound of passing bands. Then in a leafy cobbled
square we sampled food from the different Spanish regions while
we watched costumed dancers perform
to the accompaniment of strange bagpipes.
Logroño is on the 'pilgrim route' to Santiago de Compostello
and following the
symbols set into the ground we passed the church square of the
Iglesia de Santiago where
the towns and villages that they pass were set out on the paving
slabs like a giant Ludo board game. Resisting the temptation to
play ‘Hop Scotch’ we headed back for the car and continued
our travels.
We drove through the town of Santa Domingo where people sat at
the open air cafes on the red tiled pavements and amid he trees
performers in clown costumes entertained an audience of
children.
As
the day wore on the villages that we drove through assumed a
ghost like quality. The streets and became empty and deserted.
It was ‘siesta time’ when sensible Spaniards put their feet
up and have a rest.
The
vista opened up and the far away hills seemed blue in the
distant haze, bringing home to us the fact that Spain was a big
country. The only figure we saw working in the fields turned out
to be a 'santo pacaros' or a scare crow.
At
Haro flowers hung from the
wrought iron balconies and a clanging
bell echoed down the narrow Calle Santo Pomas where I
bought three bottles of Clareté at
the bargain price of 265pts each, (£1.13p). I had enjoyed it
the night before. Clareté might best be described as a rosé,
except that instead of being pink it was the colour of
Iron Bru.
In the
shady colonnade a couple playied backgammon, while a Spaniard
with a large black beret and moustache, got up from his seat by
the empty bandstand.
He lit a cigar and hurried across the square to join other local men in a bar.
His echoing footsteps and a chirping bird from a cage on a
balcony above were the only sounds.
Haro is a major wine producing town, and after checking out the
excellent wine musum (free,) we visited the Muga Bodea where we
learned that they had particularly good harvests in 1994 and '95
and were told to look out for Rioja of those years. The
tour ended with us sampling wines at a great round table with
some bread and a spicy sausage called
Choirizo.
If
you fancy a visit to Haro a good date for your diary might be
the 24th of June, but pack some clothes that you don't
mind throwing away as that's when, they hold
The Battle of the
Wine They slosh around fifty thousand litres of the stuff.
The
next time I sip a glass of wine I will think of the senorita I
saw clad in full flamenco costume, clasping a yellow rose and
waiting for the traffic lights to change at Logroño. It's not
the thing you see every day in our local street, more is the
pity.
Fact
File
Brittany
Ferries: Plymouth/Portsmouth to Santander
Tel:
0990 143 537
P&O
European Ferries: Portsmouth to Bilbao
Tel: 01705 827677
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