Feria has begun! I can’t believe its actually here, thinking to this week in January it seemed like such a long way off – and now it’s here and halfway over!
For those of you who don’t know: The Ferias de Abril are the “April Fairs” here in Sevilla. It’s a festival that’s only in Sevilla and it’s about as quintessentially Spain as you can get – and we have the entire week off of school for it.
So much preparation goes into this week I can’t even explain. The feria fairgrounds are really close to where we live in Los Remedios, maybe a 10 minute walk away, and they’ve been building the “gate” to the fair (which is a different design every year) since we got here, as well as doing construction on all of the adjacent streets and bridges to make them look good as new – people flock in from all over for this festival (Yesterday we met a woman from Argentina, this is her 3rd Feria.)
The basis of Feria is built around the casettas: basically, little houses. I thought for the longest time these were just tents, but these things are so elaborate you basically have to see them to believe it. Casettas are owned by families, businesses, political parties, etc. There are a set number of them and each has their own “address” at the fairgrounds, so as you can imagine, to have one is a BIG DEAL. People pay thousands of dollars for them, and that’s after they’ve waited on a waiting list for probably around 10-20 years to even get one.
The casettas are decorated to the brim – wallpaper, chandeliers, tables, chairs – even pictures hanging on the wall. All of them have a bar and a restaurant in them that serves food and drinks to those that are there, and each casetta has security, of course, because you have to have an invitation to get into one (except for a few “public” ones that are super crowded and not as cool.)
All of the women wear the traditional flamenco dresses, and buying one of these is probably a mixture between picking out a prom dress and a wedding dress – they cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and are fitted to a T.
So, when you show up to your casetta in your elaborate flamenco dress – what else is there to do? Besides eating tapas, drinking, and talking with your friends, everyone dances Sevillana – a structured dance with 4 parts. I know the first part…kind of….but haven’t gotten a chance to learn the rest – but I really like watching people who know what they’re doing. There’s also specific Sevillana music to dance to, and many people sit around and do the traditional clapping that goes along with it, as well as playing the castanets and other instruments.
The drink of Feria is called a “rebujito” – it’s made of a sherry white wine and sprite or 7 up. Pitchers are bountiful and everyone just sits and drinks, eats, dances, and sings with their friends all day. Horses and carriages line the street and people just flow into the fairgrounds all day and into the night.
As if this wasn’t enough – at the end of the Feria fairgrounds, there is an actual fair, full of rides, games, and fair foods. But don’t look for funnel cakes – instead you should look for Gofres, or waffles, served hot and recently made with whatever flavor syrup you could imagine, complete with whip cream upon request. These are like no waffle you have ever tasted or could ever dream to try.
Feria celebrations begin Monday at midnight when they turn all of the lights on, and then everyone proceeds to dance and sing in the streets and in their casettas. We stood in the crowded streets and saw them switch on all of the gorgeous lights, turning the fairgrounds into an atmosphere that’s kind of impossible to describe, and that was only the beginning.
Tuesday is really when everyone comes out dressed in their flamenco dresses, and we did our best to dress up as well – we had an invitation first to our site directors casetta, and after spending a little time there and downing a few pitchers of rebujito between the group, we went over to a second casetta we had an invitation to (Since we’re so cool like that.)
This casetta was a lot bigger than the first and had an outside porch (Seriously these things are like houses), which was a welcome relief because it was hot. We had an invitation to this one thanks to Claudia’s senora, who also got a few of us hooked up with a carriage ride.
In the evening, when we were sitting watching people dance Sevillana, a group of older women and men beside us in the casetta were playing castanets and clapping Sevillana as a few others danced – they noticed us watching them and some of them showed us how to do the traditional clapping so we could clap along. Before we left they all told us goodbye and they’ve spoken to me since when I see them – I was worried that with all of the tradition in this week there would be an exclusiveness to outsiders, and while that’s possible with how exclusive the casttas were, I felt completely welcome around this group of people who went out of their way to share their culture with me.
I’m just in love with Feria because of how unique this experience is – sitting in a casetta watching horses go by and around you are women dressed in Flamenco dresses dancing a dance that is only for the city you’re currently living in…it still doesn’t hit me, if that makes any sense. It feels almost like I’m in a costume party because everything is straight out of a Spanish fairy tale.
The Sevillanas have shown me time and again this semester how much they value their culture and preserving it, and I’ve noticed as I’ve traveled around Spain that no where feels as authentic as here, even if its stubbornly so. The people dress nicely to go to work, most of them only speak Spanish, the food has been completely authentic, and my house froze me during winter – but all in all I wouldn’t want to experience Spain another way, and Feria has been an exclamation mark for that.
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