Life in a Spanish village – what’s it really like?

Fiesta time

Every year on 1, 2 and 3rd May, the village hosts a wonderful three-day fiesta: the Fiesta de la Santa Cruz de Magan.  The Spanish certainly know how to party!  There are sports competitions (including shooting at balloons with a catapult), giant paella cooking and eating, and dancing every night until dawn. 

The music is so loud that even we can hear it, some 2.5km outside the village!  Everyone dresses up for the occasion – and the first night finishes with elections for the ‘dames’ and their entourage.

A yearly procession

The highlight of the fiestas comes on the third day, when there is a romeria (procession) of the statue of a local saint, Magan, starting at the little hermitage situated well above the village.  In the morning, the statue is decked with flowers and, accompanied by the dames and their entourage, it is carried down to the village by a group of local women.  This is on a steep and uneven road, so navigated with some difficulty. 

The romeria then moves from village house to village house.  Each family that participates will have a little table outside, with a white table cloth, a rose and some wheat or pearl barley on it, to welcome the saint. 

The woman of the house (importantly, not a man – though I haven’t quite worked out yet why that is!) will then pin money to the statue, and serve nibbles and drinks to everyone.  When it’s time to move on to the next house, a firework with a loud bang is launched from a belt worn by one of the locals.  A sight to be seen – and heard! 

And so the procession moves around the village, up and down the streets. And it then goes back up to the hermitage, this time followed by a group of Andalusian horses, skilfully ridden by men and women all the way to the top. 

By this time, the poor dames must be really suffering with their heels – they will have walked non-stop for 5 hours!  The romeria closes with a catholic mass at 2pm, with music and singing by people in colourful Andalusian costume.  What a day!

The bar, the church and the shop

There are three focal points in Fuente del Conde for people to get together and chat.  One of them is the local bar, Los Pajaritos.  There’s nothing like having a drink on the terrace in glorious sunshine, overlooking the hills and olive groves, with a lovely selection of tapas on the side. 

It’s a good little business that unfortunately has had to close recently for personal reasons.  And so now everyone in the village and around is on the look-out for a bar and restaurant manager to bring back this crucial hub of village life.  If anyone is interested, let me know!

The church is at the edge of the village, and only has a service once a month early on a Saturday evening.  Hilary went to have a look, and found only a handful of people attending.  Just like elsewhere in Spain, churches are emptying. 

Although … one Saturday Hilary walked down and found, to his great surprise, that the church was heaving with people.  All dressed in sombre but formal clothes to pay their respects to a villager who’d passed away recently.  Interestingly enough, he also discovered that the custom that women would sit on one side of the church and men on the other…

And there’s the local shop that is definitely a village hub, and used to just stock very basic necessities, but now in the time of the coronavirus it has really upped its game.  Its shelves are now full with all sorts of different and often local products, and it has also started to sell fresh produce and meat.  A very big and welcome change, and a positive outcome from these difficult lockdown times.  Fresh milk is still missing though, but – who knows – that might come eventually.

Village life

Local people have been immensely generous, friendly and accepting of foreigners in the village.  And even though there is a language barrier, we all try to communicate.  Fewer people now live in the village as younger people are moving out to where the jobs are.  As a result, the yearly fiesta is becoming smaller, and it’s harder to choose the dames with the average age of the village going up. 

But the good news is that, despite not having fiestas this year due to the coronavirus, it’s common knowledge that the summer really starts once the fiesta is over.  And it’s true, because looking at the forecast, we will have 28° C next week – bring it on!