When on Holiday to Spain – Visit during the Spanish Festival time

When on HOLIDAY TO SPAIN, a good week to visit is Holy week (Semana Santa) in Andalucia as it is really a personal favourite when every parish transmits out elaborate floats transported by parishioners. A procession can embark upon through the evening before coming back home the following morning. Two days later Seville celebrates the April Fair which must go down as Europe's greatest parties.



Valencia in March sees the "Fallas" when huge papier-mache figures are burnt within the roads every evening following a year continues to be spent building them. As well as in Bunyol in August it's La Tomatina, the earth's greatest tomato fight. They are certainly a few of the greatest annual festivals so far as foreign vacationers are worried but how about all of the little festivals that occur from coast to coast?



Each and every city, town and village in the country holds its unique fiesta and the more small-scale local festivals may prove just as rewarding for the visitor. In Miraflores de la Sierra within the Guadarrama mountain tops of Madrid, we used to always go to the annual village festival of San Blas in February. The entire village heads to an area hillside in which a shrine towards the village's patron saint stands. Everybody is carrying chairs, tables, food and wine in huge containers. They light open fires where "bacalao con patatas" (cod and potatoes) are prepared for the entire village. By late afternoon all of the villagers have returned towards the bars which stay packed throughout the evening. At the end from the day’s festivities the villagers bury a sardine inside a nearby area ("El Entierro de la Sardina") and they're ready to start planning for next year’s fiesta.



You will find many festivals of worldwide interest which celebrate music and also the arts too, particularly the Granada Worldwide Festival of Music and Dance which happens within the grounds from the Alhambra palace. San Sebastian in the Basque Country comes into full swing during its annual jazz and film festivals and also there is the Benicassim Festival which is becoming an essential European music festival in a tiny town north of Valencia.



When enjoying your HOLIDAY TO SPAIN at festival time, you will find plenty drink and food related fiestas through the country plus some bizarre festivals most of which involve donkeys and chapel roofs, but we will not get into that at this time.