Umbrellas, Magnolias, Biscuits, Choirs, and... CARNIVAL!

The rain it continueth to rain every day. The river is running fast and high. It has barely stopped raining since Christmas. There are flood warnings all round the Basque Country. Water levels are ten times higher than they were this time last year. And the Eastern bits near the Pyrenees have had some of the biggest snowfalls on record. (No snow in Bilbao, mind – we haven’t even had a frost yet.)

As I said, Bilbao is a city of umbrellas. So much so that pretty much every bar in the city (and there are many hundreds) has hooks underneath the bar on which you can hang your umbrella. Neat, eh? And they’re getting a lot of use at the moment…

Still, the Magnolias are out already and it feels like Spring might be about to be in the air.

Earlier this week, it was ‘el dia di San Blas’ – Saint Blaise Day. This is marked with a special biscuit:

And then it was ‘el dia di Santa Agueda’ – Saint Agatha’s Day. Although not a major fiesta, this was one of the most charming things we’ve seen here. The main event is the ‘vispera (vespers) di Santa Agueda’. In the evening, local choirs – from Bilbao and the towns and villages around – walk around the Casco Viejo and sing the hymn of Santa Agueda, which is a rather beautiful song, basically saying that the purpose of the song is to bring warmth and happiness to people in their houses at this cold time of year:


¡Felicidad a todos los de esta casa!
venimos llamando,
de puerta en puerta como una vieja costumbre
con intención de renovarla este año.
No somos muy ricos en dinero,
ni en zapatos.
Pero andamos con la garganta sana,
y tenemos ganas de cantar.

Estamos en víspera de Santa Águeda
día de Euskal Herria,
El día que hemos elegido
para llenar las casa de alegría cantando.
Querida Santa hoy hemos cogido
a nuestro amigo del camino.
Con su ayuda podemos llenar
de esperanza este día.

Most of them ended up singing outside our flat. Some of them were really lovely – rather like the Welsh choirs in feel. The custom on this day is that the choirs wear Basque country dress and bang sticks on the ground in rhythm as they’re singing

It was raining, of course, but that didn't stop anyone.

Here's a YouTube film of a typical group singing the hymn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j4ZZ4gJHwo

In the morning, a group of children from a local primary school sang outside our flat. This was fascinating because it was an extraordinarily multicultural group, presumably from the area round the corner from the Casco Viejo where many immigrants live. There was hardly a Basque face amongst them – mostly South Americans and West Africans – but they were all singing the hymn of Santa Agueda in Euskera and wearing smocks and berets.

Indeed, the Basques are proud that they have taught their language and customs to so many immigrants through the school system, seeing this as part of the strategy of national revival for Euskera – something I’ll try and write about more later.

And it's not just choirs that do it. Here are the firemen ('bomberos') of Bilbao singing the Santa Agueda hymn:
http://www.eitb.com/es/videos/detalle/1246744/video-santa-agueda--los-bomberos-bilbao-cantan-santa-agueda/

Choral singing in the streets doesn’t just happen on this day, though. There’s a lot of it here.  An organisation called Bilbo Kantari organises regular communal singing of traditional Basque songs. The events happen on the street outside our flat every couple of weeks. We also came across the same phenomenon in San Sebastian. They distribute songbooks with the words in Euskera so that everyone can join in, and they’re very popular: all part of the hugely popular revival of Basque language and folklore.

After the relatively subtle celebrations of San Blas and Santa Agueda, the week rounded off with CARNIVAL! After all, it’s at least – oh, let’s see – a couple of weeks since the population of Bilbao had an excuse to party in the streets en masse….

This was the view from our balcony last night as the Bilbainos came out in force to dance and sing and drink.

The usual fiesta type thing – only this time with FANCY DRESS! It was fancy dress central  - ‘El Disfraz’ in Spanish.

The fancy dress shops do most of their year’s business this week. For at least a fortnight you couldn’t even walk past the fancy dress shops because of the queues blocking the streets. I’m afraid my photos don’t really do justice to the extraordinary variety of beautifully disported costumes, but here are a few shots.

And the Latin American immigrants were noticeably out in force, showing everyone how Carnival is really done.

So there we are, another week, another fiesta here in Bilbao.

Hasta luego, chicos y chicas!