Hard a Porto
24 June 2005. Inspired by .
More metronomic chirruping, this time because someone was hitting me repeatedly on the head with a plastic squeaking hammer. The all-night party of São João (which has been commented on before in the next-door parish) was last night, and the thudding of my head today isn't just due to the hammers.
The festival is chaotic, global in various guises and celebrated in Iberia outside the capitals. Rather than a national holiday, it's only Barcelona, Valencia and the islands in Spain, and Porto and northwards in Portugal, that get today off in recompense for a midsummer night of pagan carnivalesque.
Porto in particular has the most customs of any festival I've ever been to, many of which I enjoyed last night as the honoured guest of Mr Vargas:
* big fresh sardines, to be bbq'd and scoffed with friends and with your hands
* green peppers, also from the bbq
* huge paper balloons, launched into the sky with candles underneath
* the aforementioned plastic hammers (great history of the thing here; scroll to the bottom for the hammerheads)
* jumping over a fire to rid yourself of the demons (we didn't find any, which could explain the head throbbing)
* waving an enormous six-foot smelly garlic stem/flower in someone's face
* organised and less-official fireworks (of course)
* a small shrub in your house that only lives for a few weeks, and has a nice smell when you rub your hands in it
* a small collection of mantlepiece figurines based on the popular saints
* pushing heather under people's noses (to combat the garlic)
* staying up all night and then walking to the beach
And if you have time for all that by sunrise, you're clearly not drinking enough.