Always a concert in the square
There’s an app put out by the Jerez local government that tells you of upcoming events. It pings you when it’s going to be hot, when it’s going to be windy, or rainy, or when the pollen count is high. It has a live GPS tracker during Easter holy week, when at any one time there are 30 or so ‘brotherhoods’ carrying their heavy floats with their Mary and Jesus figures atop (Joseph doesn’t get a guernsey, which I find a little uninclusive) so you can easily find your favourite group and see how fast they’re moving. It lists events, exhibitions and displays, and how to get to the MotoGP circuit when there’s a race on. It’s also the gateway to government services, pet advice, street hygiene, climate change concerns, business services, live parking space availability, and tourist advice. All this in a town of fewer than 200,000 people.
In summer, virtually every week there’s some kind of free outdoor concert. The weekend just gone saw a stunning flamenco performance in the Plaza de la Asunción, which is about 150 yards from our front door.
Sure, the photo is blurry, but I think it’s because they were moving too fast. Or maybe I was moving too fast? I can’t remember.
The group belted out some hair-raising numbers with the intensity of a locomotive, mesmerising the crowd, many of whom were comfortably seated in plastic chairs by the stage, the rest of us congregated around the square.
That’s me propping up the column of the square’s central monument. I stood there for an hour and, unusually for me, didn’t even feel like seeking a drink. At one point Jess asked me to go get us one but I pretended not to hear.
Half hour later, we headed home and called in to the bar belonging to our local publican Diego, who had two glasses of red poured and placed by the time we’d sat down. Not a bad way to finish the evening.
Stepping backwards through time a couple of weeks and we have our next event, one that ordinarily I wouldn’t have touched with a 10-foot pole. It was a death metal concert in Plaza del Banco (the one with the giant Australian Moreton Bay fig tree), a competition to identify the best band of that ‘alternative’ genre in the region. It ran over a few nights and culminated in a kind of grand final of screeching oblivion-ness.
Know what? I bloody loved it. Sure, it’s like listening to a Tasmanian devil that’s just been bitten by something (if you’re not from Tasmania, think of a werewolf that’s just been bitten by a Tasmanian devil), but the musicianship and professionalism on display were first rate. Along with the lighting and smoke it was quite a spectacle.
A bit like gazing into the depths of hell but a lot more pleasant.
Part of the appeal was the diversity of the audience. Families with kids in prams, oldies with walkers and wheelchairs, teenagers with their caps on backwards, all mingling with die-hard death-metallers with T-shirts to prove it. This demographic melting pot is typical of a lot of the events in Spain. It makes for a safe and secure party environment that’s foreign to us foreigners, used as we are to avoiding events such as these because of … you know … the young. It’s hard to go full rebel when there’s a chance your grandmother is in the crowd with you.
Even at midnight the vibe was civilised. I didn’t hear a single bottle smash.
A further week back and even closer to home came something completely different. We were quietly parked outside Diego’s one evening with our Tassie friends Gerry and Alison when a troupe of players appeared, costumed and tooled-up with some serious musical hardware. Were I an Englishman I’d suspect a Morris crossover but this was a lot less hey-nonny-nonny and … well … a lot less Morris. This group, hailing from Madrid, was participating in a week-long nationwide contest, the latest edition of which was in Jerez, and were celebrating an evening off by jamming an impromptu jam into our wonderful Plaza Plateros, literally at our front door.
They played and they sang, even despite Jess’s involvement …
There’s always something going on in Jerez and much of it is a surprise – as good as the Jerez app is, they don’t cover the impromptu stuff. Also the app is in Spanish and a lot of the content assumes a degree of local knowledge so sometimes we struggle to navigate it. Too often we read on the local news site about how such-and-such event last night was fabulous and if you weren’t there you really missed out. Such is vida. Sometimes the surprise is the prize.
