Sat Mallorca Fest

I had a lie-in, as Steph says. She means you lie in bed, but when she says it, I always think she’s just pronouncing lion strangely. I needed the sleep.
I spent my afternoon applying for jobs and looking at touristy stuff. I need to figure out my long-term AND short-term future!! I think next weekend may be Carnaval. It’s definitely Barca! I’m planning on staying in Barcelona until next Sunday or Monday. Two of my friends from Korea are coming to visit starting Wednesday: Tom and Youngja. I am thinking I’m going to check out some more cities in Spain, then go to Paris and then visit my friend in Ireland. I have also just realized that Portugal is RIGHT attached to Spain (insert blonde joke here). I may try to add a city from there into the mix too.
I went to Steph’s to go with her and her roommate Natalie to the Mallorca festival? Natalie had said that they had a big bonfire in front of a church where you take your own meat and they cook it for you. On the way, I noticed that there were loads of people in my square. Lots of them were in black outfits with flames at the bottom of their pants and shirts. Most of those people were carrying a drum. To me, it looked like the beginnings of a parade.
When I got to Sant Joan, the church, there was a stage set up and the makings of a bonfire. There were some logs about as high as I am tall. They were fenced off. From Steph’s we went to the grocery store to get some meat. I picked out a kabob set. I said that it just looked like it belonged on a fire. We also got some steak, rolls, olives, cheese, chips, beer, and candy.
We went back to get Natalie and then went to the square. The bonfire was now lit and there was a crowd starting to gather. They were mostly around a circle that music was coming out of. It almost sounded like bagpipes. I got a glimpse of a sort of flute.

Then out of the center of the circle, people in white pants, blue shirts, and red belts started rising. They were climbing up each other in a circle, making a sort of human statue. Apparently, it’s a Catalan thing called Castells, meaning human tower.

After that, we started to go down a side street toward some firework looking things. Natalie’s friend from school who we happened to bump into told her that the fireworks were actually coming to us so we went back toward the center of the square. More and more people were gathering. The proportion of people in costume was also growing. There were lots of people in red robes with masks with real horns on them. There was also a guy with a skeleton painted onto his shirt.

Then a drumming group made their way into the center of the square. They were all in red shirts and black pants. They were very intense and pounded a nice beat into the night.
Then some people in the center of the circle lit firework-types of fire-sprayers on the ends of sticks. They swirled around in the center of the circle, spreading sparks in all directions. It was very pretty, but looked potentially dangerous for those who were close to the action (of course, I think of the danger).
Another group of drummers played and then guys in red jagged capes and black outfits with flames took the center stage. In groups, they lit their fire shooters and created a sort of cloud explosion above themselves. They then split off from each other and came toward the edge of the clearing. They circled the edge of the crowd. I quickly backed up as sparks flew toward us.


Then another set of devils took over the center. They had a sort of ground fire that was red. It shot out sparks and they skipped around it.

Then they had another group that sprayed sparks out of sticks.

Then a dragon was brought to the center of the circle. He was longer than I am tall and draped with a black fabric that hung under him. People were under the structure holding it up, almost like the Chinese New Year parade dragons, but he was a solid shell. The dragon was green with orange spikes down his back, curly white horns and fangs and a big red tongue. When he took the stage, his crowd accompanied him. They lit him from the mouth and made him dance around, spewing fire from his mouth.

Then a group in blue and yellow came to the center and also sprayed the crowd with sparks. The groups seemed to be pushing closer and closer to the edge of their circle, also closer and closer with their sparks to the crowd. By this point, Natalie and Steph had joined me a bit further back from the front of the crowd. The performers made beautiful patterns, but I wasn’t interested in experiencing them quite as intimately as they seemed to want me to. I don’t WANT a burn mark in my coat or my face! Steph got a spark in her hair and said it hurt.
Next, was a Gaudi lizard just like the one that they have on the fountain at the main entrance of Parc Guell.

He had firework bases that looked like candles attached to various places on his back. I believe he was lit via the mouth and then sparks exploded out of his back. He danced around, moving his head up and down and spun in circles. He was pretty neat.

Then the dragon and the lizard were both reloaded. They danced around together in the center of the circle. The members of both of their groups also had individual sticks of fireshooters. It was basically just a massive glow of fire-- it was hard to even see what was really happening.

Then there was a drum-off. One group was on the steps of the church and played a lively number. Then a group close to us competed with them. They were really working hard at pounding the drums, loud enough to hurt my ears! They had a really nice beat though.

After that, Steph and I took our bag of food and approached the bonfire. It was going on 10:30 or 11 and I was FUNGRY. We saw that people had metal sort of grills that they were putting next to the fire. The grills had 2 sets of vertical panels that were attached by a hinge with handles on the opposite end. Steph thought maybe we should wait for Natalie to translate in Spanish what we wanted. I thought it was fairly obvious. Point to the bag, point to the fire: make a bit of a scene and someone WILL help us. I asked a guy next to me. He didn’t know but my scene caused the lady next to Steph to offer that we could use her griller mechanism next.
We stood by the fire and waited our turn. As we waited, a band took the stage on the other side of the square. Natalie came back with a couple of friends who also work in Barcelona. The other 2 girls were Scottish sisters. We chatted and waited and waited and waited. The woman who offered us her griller turned out to have about 30 friends and a million pounds of meat to cook.

I went to the “port-o-loo” and when I came back, OUR meat was in the contraption. Dinner might really happen today!! Steph and I took the first 2 steaks as sandwiches since we did all of the cooking AND shopping. We shared the next ones. We also took the first kabobs. They were AMAZING. They had been marinated and had pepper and onion between the meat blobs.

We both reaked of bonfire because we'd basically stood IN it to do the cooking. It was mostly just embers and smoke by the time we got to use the roaster. We had had enough of it so we ate some cheese. Natalie had also brought MARSHMALLOWS. We put them on chopsticks and roasted them too. They were flavored so a little weird, but still good.
Then Steph and I left the other girls to finish cooking whatever other meat they wanted and went to dance. The music was really fun—something to jump around to. Our favorite part was when the band would make the whole crowd crouch down and then with their signal, LEAP back up. Also, there were appropriate times to just shout.

There were people doing what appeared to be traditional dances, along with the ones just hopping about. It was great fun but we quit around 1. We have THINGS to do tomorrow!