A toast for San Juan

Over the weekend Málaga celebrated La Noche de San Juan. This is a night where Spain celebrates the blameless life of a saint by making bonfires on the beach and drinking lots of beer. It's kind of a head scratcher when you really think about it, but why spend time thinking about it when you could be having fun on the beach?

It was fun though.  The beach was packed with picnicking families and and the air was thick with sea mist and smoke from barbecues. It looked and smelled like the Fourth of July. There was a concert, and a few fireworks went off helter-skelter at irregular intervals, and a fun night was had by all.

I'm including this shot because I think it's cool.  Somebody on a nearby blanket had this bright green laser beam, and you could see the whole length of the light really clearly because it was reflecting off the heavy fog. It's not really in focus, but hey, we've got to pick our battles, right?

It's Holy Week! (please read the disclaimer)

SUPER IMPORTANT MUST-READ DO OR DIE DISCLAIMER: 

These are not photos of  a Klan rally. Most unfortunately for Spain, the KKK decided to model their uniforms off Spain's Semana Santa getup, which has been around since the 15th century and only has holy and reverent connotations for the Spanish. Keep that in mind.

Okay, with that said, here we are: Holy Week in Spain, called Semana Santa,  is a BIG DEAL. Not a big deal but a BIG DEAL. Málaga has one of the more famous celebrations, although if you ask any Malagueño they will sniff and tell you that they have the only celebration. 

The hallmarks of the thing are the parades. They close down all the major streets in the city and pretty much continually march up and down, in slightly creepy costumes, holding religious icons, candles and huge floats called tronos.  The floats are carried by men, hoisted on the shoulders, sometimes up to 250 or 300 men at a time.  It's quite impressive really.

Top o' the mañana to you!

This picture is of Portuguese vino verde, green wine.

It's been a lovely spring day in Málaga and tonight, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I am going to drink green beer.

See the connection between the picture and the post?

Green wine.  Green beer.

Get it?

All other nativity sets will now seem boring next to this

Here is one of the charming things about a Spanish Christmas: the Spanish love nativity scenes.  No wait - the Spanish adore nativity scenes. They call them belénes (Bethlehems, simply enough) and they are everywhere.

In a country so infamously work-averse that there is literally a national napping championship, building a nativity set is attacked with all the vim and energy of NASA in the days before the moon landing. The one at my school is the size of a large ping pong table and has a full-on market scene, chicken coops, and rather ambitiously,  an elephant on a rooftop.

About a quarter of the whole thing - I couldn't maneuver myself well enough to get it all in

Uhh sorry for the focus on this picture - I have no excuses

So given the seriousness with which belénes are contemplated here, imagine my surprise when my friend Irene told me the Spanish in-joke about the nativities: in each big nativity, if you look hard enough, there will be a peasant man, somewhere half-hidden, with his pants pulled down and his butt waving in the air, cheerfully taking care of business.  As in, he's pooping. In the nativity scene. Next to baby Jesus.

At first I thought she was pulling my leg, like hazing for the newbies or something, but she assured me that she was not.  I went back to the one at my school, and had a closer look, and finally, in the corner, look what I found:

I didn't have my camera so this is a borrowed picture - but it looked just like this

The Spanish grow dearer to my heart every day.