The start of Saint Thomas' festival was announced yesterday by a bunch of students at our institute in traditional baserritar (19th-century Basque farmer oufits) yelling the
irrintzi and playing the trikitixa (accordion) while they paraded out of the building with a big Olentzero (Basque Santa Claus) doll at 11 in the morning. Officially a way to commemorate the day that farmers came to town to pay the rent, it is now a kind of Basque Pride day, with lots of traditional arts, including eating and drinking and partying down in the rain.
The
Old Part of Donosti was totally packed, with people forming long lines to buy talo and txistorra-corn bread and sausage-along with cheeses, honey, Basque Cake, hard cider, and all manner of Christmas pastries. There were people selling crafts, including hand-made pelota balls. Pelota is what they call Jai Alai here-Jai Alai actually means 'happy party' in Euskara-and instead of using baskets for hurling the ball here, they usually hit it with their hands. It's crazy, but very popular, and people bet a lot of money on pelota games. There were a couple guys playing the txalaparta, which was a couple people hitting wooden blocks with sticks, and which was originally used to communicate messages between the mountains.
At some point I've got to be Donosti's
Bill Cunningham and get a picture of this Anthony Bourdain look-alike from Avenida Madrid (Bourdain has gone
on the record as saying that yeah, Barcelona's ok, but Donosti is where he wants to be in the end) as well as this lady I routinely see on the train who has the most impressive hair sculpture. evah. But we will save the non-baserritar style for non-festival days.
The start of Saint Thomas' festival was announced yesterday by a bunch of students at our institute in traditional baserritar (19th-century Basque farmer oufits) yelling the irrintzi and playing the trikitixa (accordion) while they paraded out of the building with a big Olentzero (Basque Santa Claus) doll at 11 in the morning. Officially a way to commemorate the day that farmers came to town to pay the rent, it is now a kind of Basque Pride day, with lots of traditional arts, including eating and drinking and partying down in the rain.
The Old Part of Donosti was totally packed, with people forming long lines to buy talo and txistorra-corn bread and sausage-along with cheeses, honey, Basque Cake, hard cider, and all manner of Christmas pastries. There were people selling crafts, including hand-made pelota balls. Pelota is what they call Jai Alai here-Jai Alai actually means 'happy party' in Euskara-and instead of using baskets for hurling the ball here, they usually hit it with their hands. It's crazy, but very popular, and people bet a lot of money on pelota games. There were a couple guys playing the txalaparta, which was a couple people hitting wooden blocks with sticks, and which was originally used to communicate messages between the mountains.
At some point I've got to be Donosti's Bill Cunningham and get a picture of this Anthony Bourdain look-alike from Avenida Madrid (Bourdain has gone on the record as saying that yeah, Barcelona's ok, but Donosti is where he wants to be in the end) as well as this lady I routinely see on the train who has the most impressive hair sculpture. evah. But we will save the non-baserritar style for non-festival days.
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