The Pais Basco knows how to party. It feels to have more public holidays, in addition to National Holidays, and excuses to party than anywhere else. So when the locals of the region’s largest party city, Donostia-San Sebastian, nominate the 20th of January as the year’s biggest fiesta, you can believe that it will undoubtedly be crazy.
La Tamborrada is a 24hr Drum, Food, and Wine Festival that smothers the town in a cacophony of tympanic beats, mastication, chinking glasses and raucous laughter. Locals designate that it typically marks the start of Cider season, whereby the regional Sidreria’s commence serving the new season’s freshly brewed apple cider – a much drier, acidic cider than those of the English. For more in depth historical background, consult the Wikipedia page.
The party starts at exactly midnight on the morning of January 20th, where thousands of people cram into Konstituzio Plaza to watch the Mayor raise the flag of San Sebastian. This is met with the initial drumming performance, and the Basque chant of the March of San Sebastian – solely in Euskera. The performers are dressed either in chef’s uniforms, or in military dress.
Constitution Plaza on Midnight - Photo courtesy of Mary-Claire Simmonds
After the initial chant, the crowds disperse (somewhat), and a chorus of drums, barrels, and marching bands proudly strut along the cities main boulevards, each representing a local restaurant or community group. The bands only stop at routine locations in-between songs, to share drinks with locals watching from the sides of the street, or to run into a local bar to devour a few cheeky Pintxos – much needed energy to sustain the 24 hours of marching (and drinking).
Meanwhile, the locals not taking part in a contingency of the parade, intermittently watch from the sidelines, or disappear into small, often reclusive sociedades gastronómicas (Gastronomic Societies). Here the guests feast on gluttonous amounts of seafood, including the traditional Elver (eel) eaten during the feast (despite it’s overwhelming cost). Originally admitting only males, these clubs are now open to anyone and everyone, but are usually family/friend events where people cook for each other, and drink copious quantities of alcohol over the entire day.
Drumming Participants and Crowd
If this wasn’t enough, the next day features mini-Tamborrada. All the schools of the region dress up, and repeat the drumming procession for a few hours, dressed in military costumes representing a variety of countries.
If there is anything to learn from this day, it is that the Basque population (in particular the Donostiarras) do anything and everything to enjoy life. The concept of a life lived too richly (or too poorly for that matter) is simply not in their vocabulary. These festivals revel in excess, in the enjoyment of the finer points of life, and in the fact that they reserve the right to have as many of them as physically possible in a calendar year, regularly dispersed between the siesta’s and gorging of everyday life. And few of them seem to regret this enjoyment of life, and feel it as a positive glean on their health, not a blip that must be countered for in the days that follow.
If anything, I hope to revel in life in the same way they do from now on.
~ Matt
yearofexperiences 