Fiesta season is in full flow at this time of the year in Spain and last night it was the turn of  the small village La Alqueria, about a mile from La Villa Wow for theirs.  All these fiestas owe their origins to Saints and the particular saint in this case was St Anna.  We headed out at 10:30pm to see what was occurring.  As is the norm in at these events a life size effigy of the saint is paraded around the village.  What was unusual about this particular case was that the effigy was being carried by women.  (I say this is unusual, I have never seen it done before.  It may be quite common for all I know.  Perhaps they take the EU equality act of 2010 seriously here).  They were all dressed in black trousers with white shirts and white gloves.  From this get up I assume that St Anna was the patron saint of snooker referees.

The procession left the church, went down the road, turned around and then returned and brought St Anna into the performance area (otherwise known as the School Playground with a makeshift bar erected by the swings and slides). On Anna’s outing, every so often a bell would ring; the party of girls carrying her would stop and put her down, sometimes having a swig from a flagon. Hold on, this is a group of women ranging from teenagers up to grannies, all dressed the same, in Spain for a weekend, drinking when a bell rang.  This was just an elaborate hen party I was watching!

After Anna had left the building (well the playground) the disco lights were turned on and the party really started (it was now gone midnight).  The first act consisted of what appeared to be a Tight Fit tribute act (remember them? Oh, you don’t.  Well they were around in the early 80’s.  They were 1 bloke and 2 women and they didn’t have many hits. Or talent for that matter).

The man was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt; but no gloves, so he obviously wasn’t part of the hen party.  The 2 girls wore orange dresses.  If I didn’t know better I would have said that they were the EasyJet stewards from the flight out, but I couldn’t be sure.  The girls did a number (badly).  The bloke then did a number (marginally better) while one girl worked the Karaoke machine and the other one disappeared.  Then the missing girl returned wearing a flamenco dress so bright that it would even make Zandra Rhodes look dowdy (I’m really into the 80’s references tonight aren’t I?).  Then the full horror of her singing Viva Espana, flat, was released onto us.  Luckily the audience had been drinking quite a bit and just seemed to treat her screeching as a form of tinnitus.  I’m glad to say that they didn’t pander to applauding her either.  She just finished to the hum of people chatting and ordering beers at the bar.  Having despatched Tight Fitted (that would be the name of a Tight Fit tribute act wouldn’t it?) the next act faced this not overly friendly crowd.

We were then treated to three middle aged to elderly men, dressed in black singing about lost love.  They were a bit like The Priests, but minus the dog collars.  Unlike the Tight Fit act, these lot played musical instruments. Well, one of them played the tambourine and the triangle.  By this time it was 1:30 in the morning and myself and Nico were getting wifi withdrawal symptoms so we returned home.  But as we sat on the terrace due to a sea breeze and a PA system with which The Who would have been proud, we enjoyed the music from the fiesta well into the early hours, whether we wanted to or not.