A Celebration, a Storm, and Memory

 At midnight, the city rocked with explosions.  

Not to worry, although for a moment I did. It was a large fireworks show, I assume in honor of the día festivo, holiday, declared for today and tomorrow which gives people four days off, essentially, 

Spain values celebrations and the resultant time off from work. 

Last evening, when I went to the supermarket to buy raw ingredients for at least today, the clerk—a lovely man named José, told me he couldn’t wait. He looked forward to kicking back and relaxing, he said. 

While the main businesses take the holiday some smaller ones do not, especially those providing necessary servicies such as many cafes. That was fortunate for me.

I left home shortly after sunrise—no I did not get up that early. The noise last night kept me stimulated and awake. And, anyway, it does not turn light until around 8 AM. As I left my place, I saw the homeless man across the street putting on his shoes and carefully arranging his things to stow them somewhere. 

Spain does indeed value celebrations and so, the fireworks as well as many official acts, just not the massive thunder storm that has also cut loose today.

The day is an intriguing one of keeping historical memory alive and tying it to the present, It is a celebration of when the King of Aragon and duke of Barcelona, the young Jaume I (Jaime 1), after failing in his endeavors to acquire land by conquest north of the Pyranees in what is now France, turned south and conquered Valencia. 

The festivo remembers that event, something also marked in street names and other events in this dependency of Valencia, by linking it to a celebration of the Community of Valencia, of which Alicante is a part. 

Communities in Spain, roughly equivalent to US States, also mark historical, economic, and cultural units. 

In the present, the memory is tied to a political effort to rid the Community of its president, Mazón, who happens to be from Alicante, for his abysmal failure of leadership a year ago when a different massive storm hit, caused extensive flooding, and the death of more than 200 people due to government inaction. The poll released today says 70% of the Community’s population demands he resign. As that number has grown he drops his eyes and toughs it out. 

Today, this may be about poll results, marches and court actions, but it is notably not supported by the movement of troops and sword or cannon battles. 

While the image is one of a day in which there was a clean break; Valencia changed from being Arabic and became Valencian and Spanish, although that is a hot topic these days and many, especially in other parts of Spain say it is OK if they keep their language related to Catalan, but they should officially speak Spanish and just be Spanish.  

In days in which the airwaves and internet are filled with images of Israelis trying to destroy Arabic Hamas in Gaza, and perhaps “cleanse” the area for Israeli settlement, a bit of attention to the notion of ethnic and religious replacement here is a question worth reflecting on.

The moment of the reconquest is ostensibly memorialized in the battles between Christians and Moors celebrated here in almost every town and neighborhood though on different dates. I say ostensibly because, they have come more to represent the little invasions of slavers from North Africa who would strike almost at random along the coast and even a bit inland to take merchandise and perhaps even more important humans as slaves to sell in the markets of Algiers and perhaps elsewhere.  

Those moments of invaders from the sea—a brief entrance and not a long lasting one with a population replacement—came to be the material for the celebratory representations and popular memory.

In them, we note the population has already been Christianized, They unite against the invaders, the Islamic moors who come from the sea. 

I do not know the history of this transformation, although it is an important one. The whole Mediterranean coast of Spain has stone watch towers, look outs and castles on hill tops to see and give early warning of the invaders as well as to serve to defend against them. When the invaders could they would sneak up and catch people unawares, working in the fields or elsewhere, even mending their fishing nets, to capture them and take them to North Africa. 

That moment in history changed almost two centuries ago with the destruction of the regimes in Tangiers and Algeria. Yet the memory remains, codified, and annually performed. People come of age playing roles in these dramas in the streets.

Today, though, Valencia has a new Moorish population, as the rightwing Vox would call them, the Moroccans and Algerians who have come to work, especially in agriculture and construction. That relationship has tension in historical memory and gets activated every year when people dress up as Moorish pirates and Moorish women to have sword fights with Christians in the streets. I am told contemporary North African immigrants do not participate in this and, I imagine, many stay home those days. 

This day pretends a triumphal entry of Jaime I on horseback with his soldiers into the glorious and ancient city of Valencia. That may be fictitious, but one wonders how they were received, especially in the middle ages, i.e.October 9, 1237. 

These seem to have been changes of feudos, where the people became vassals of a new Lord. I imagen that moment was dramatic and emotional. But, there does not seem to have been a major exchange of population. Some of Muslim lords had supported Jaume for a time and Valencia had been paying an onerous tribute to the throne of Aragon, which had also been a major Muslim center. 

Alicante still was not in Jaume’s hands. It ended up attached to Castilla and Alfonso el Sabio, its great monarch.  

In 1264 the Muslims of Alicante and near by down to Murcia, rose up. They were still numerous, but slowly the pressure was on to convert such that by the nineteenth century there were few if any Muslims in Alicante or Valencia. 

That story of change of religion, language, and perhaps of people is one I shall study a bit and write about later. 

For today we will celebrate with the rain fall and waters running in the region’s exotic streams and rivers the existence of a Valencian Community, now perhaps the most diverse in Spain even if fraught with politics over language and perhaps, if Vox has its way, over ethnicity and race.   

Meanwhile lightning explodes in the sky and rain beats a tattoo on the awnings and side walks of the city. 

Hot Days, Mediterranean Sleep

 We are at the minimum temperature for the day, 23 celsius or 74 Fahrenheit. The sun only hints at rising and song birds, at least a few of them in this overbuilt space, sing into dawn.

Just a bit of cool blows in a slight breeze. I feel it as I sit shirtless on my terrace six floors above the street and about a mile from the Sea.

Being awake now in this quickly disappearing darkness is a luxury. So few people are. We are still three hours or so from the city’s awakening when cafés lift their shutters as people trickle from residences on their way to work. Well, it is Sunday, so a correction, maybe four or five hours till that trickle of people leaving home for one reason or another becomes noticeable. 

At midnight, last night and tonight, the sky over the sea by the city did and will erupt in color. Claps of explosions bounce in the air and smack buildings. The city is nearing the end of its June firework competition in which five firms are competing to see who can claim the official seal of performing the best show of colored bursts at the time when one day changes to the next.

For some time now, journalists and promotors have hailed the Mediterranean diet. In all honesty, it seems to weaken in the onslaught of industrial food and marketing. Still, there is something else Mediterranean worth looking into and celebrating, sleep divided into two. 

Afternoons are so hot. Yes, I know. I look at the numbers and they are not any hotter than they are in much of the United States, So, yes. People live the rise and fall of temperatures differently here. Spanish officialdom encourages people to pull down their persianas, their slatted shutters on a roll, to block out light and hence heat, to keep the inside temperatures down. They also encourage windows and doors be opened into the night to draw cooler air inside. 

After lunch, while the sun blazes, it is dark inside as a result and people sleep for a two or three hours until the heat breaks its rise and begins descending seriously.

This is the siesta and it is far more than a nap. That word suggests a brief snooze while here people easily get an hour or two of sleep and that makes up for less sleep at night.

At midnight the city sponsors noise and explosions. They expect whole families to be up and enjoying the time. And, in fact, they are and do. 

Yesterday afternoon, when I came back from the nearby grocery store, a neighbor from the floor below mine, a learned woman in her early seventies, stood at the building’s door with a pile of bags. She was waiting for her husband and grandchildren to return from going for the car. (my building does not have its own parking and so people must rent or buy spaces elsewhere). 

We smiled and said hello.  I asked if they were off somewhere thinking maybe they were taking a weekend trip. “We are going to the beach—to one a bit away from the city’s center—to see the fireworks with our grandchildren.”

It probably was two or later before they returned and tumbled into slumber. No worries, today is Sunday and they can sleep in. Wake a bit before noon, have a leisurely coffee and toast to begin their day at the same time when in the US people are preparing or eating lunch.

In any case, here, mid afternoon, say three thirty of four, after their lunch, they will stretch out again on their beds, in the dark inside and sleep again. 

I am not a scientist wiring people up to study this biphasic sleep, to know how deep it is or to figure out its effect on the body. Instead, though a trained observer, I live here and now I too sleep in shifts, one at night and one in the afternoon. I have taken on this Mediterranean rhythm of life. Mine is probably more triphasic—I love the dawn; so I sleep, wake up for a couple of hours, sleep again, wake up until after lunch I sleep again and then am up till near midnight. It all works out to about eight hours.   

The gulls have been calling for a while now, while I type away. The doves have started cooing and just now pigeons began their more rattling calls. Dawn is fully here. The sun is now beginning to climb above the horizon. Heat will soon follow.