Sagunto Festival

october 6-9 was the festival de moros y cristianos here in sagunto. the festival started out with a 2-3 hour parade that had just about every kind of sparkly muslimish or spanish costume that you could dream of. also, there were horses (yay!) and bands and drums and it was very very cool all in all.

spanish prince and princess of some sort

all up and down the parade route there were these lights hanging above the streets. the red crosses were for "los cristianos" and the green moons were for "los moros"

basically, this festival was commorating the conflict between Jaime I (first king of spain) and the moors as both tried to occupy the castle of sagunto and the surrounding areas.

at times when we were bored with watching the parade and were content to just listen to the stellar music, we entertained ourselves by taking random pictures of each other. after a bunch of the ACA students that i had walked down with decided to go find a better place to watch the parade from, i ended up hanging out with several of the theology students. pictured below are adelin, emanuel, and cristian (not pictured are claudia and john).

after the tail end of the parade passed us, we trailed them in the streets marching along to the music and generally goofing off. at the end of the parade route they had a raised platform where all the "royalty" who were in the parade were seated. when we got there, everything was breaking up and we were able to get pictures with random parade people. here i am wearing and amazingly cool hat/turbin/thing. one thing that i've really like about the spanairds so far is that they all seem to be really nice. no complaints or rolled eyes or anything when barraged by many americans wanting pictures with them.

while we had been marching down the street my group had been joined by pretty much the rest of CAS that was down at the parade. when we were done with parade people pics, my original group plus erin, kim, and txe txu (pronounced "cheh-choo") decided to go get something to eat. so we headed back down the same street, being loud and kicking empty pop cans like soccer balls. after much deliberation and indecisiveness and sidetracking, we ended up at a kebab place. there we joked and goofed off more as some of the guys had sandwiches, claudia bought us all ice cream sandwiches, and txe txu made the girls napkin roses.

since it was getting late and the girls' dorm closes with locked doors at midnight, we decided we needed to head back. but not before making fools of ourselves in the streets again. txe txu took us on the ride of our lives as he tried to get back to the school in 4 minutes to beat curfew. which he did; we arrived at the dorm at 11:59 pm.

the next day, kim and i decided to walk into sagunto again for the next part of the festival. our professors had told us that there would be something up at the castle the next morning at 11am. like good little adventists, we didn't end up leaving the school till 10:50 and so when we got to the castle at 11:30 and nothing was going on, we were a little confused. we then decided to go to the far side of the castle that we hadn't made it to when we came with the school and take more pics. which we did until we heard the sounds of a band and rifles coming up the street towards the castle. so we hadn't missed it, it was just at noon, not 11. it was a mini-parade of the people from the night before and since it was daytime i got better pics of the pretty costumes, although i felt really bad for the people who were wearing them cause it was about 80 degrees out and i was boiling in a tanktop and shorts.

they all paraded up to the front of one of the arches of the castle and proceeded to have an argument (with mics) between the moor king and jaime I of spain. and i understood about 10% of the speeches; mainly that both sides thought they had divine right to rule in the area, both insulted the other's god and that it would be battle to the death. while standing around, i caught a glimpse of this dad and son who were dressed up and had to take a pic. awwwww.

and here's a picture of the rifle corps who delighted in shooting off their blank rounds at random times and during supposed "battles" and scaring the crowd. even when i knew they were going to shoot, i still jumped like crazy every time.

at the very end of the speeches, the two kings came down and had a "duel to the death." jaime I beat the moor and everyone cheered and then it was all over.

after much wishy-washyness, i finally overcame my shyness and went and asked the spanish prince dude if i could have my picture taken with him. which obviously i did, and even though neither of us really look that good, i can still say that i "found" my spanish prince. ha!

after that, kim and i and adam (we found him up at the castle), went down the street and meandered through the medieval market. since it was the first day, some people were still setting up and it wasn't really that great. which was a real bummer in the end cause it caused us to not come down on tuesday for "dia de valencia," the real festival day cause we thought it would be the same. which other people told us it wasn't; we missed street performers and more music and other stuff. boo!

for lunch we ended up having a spinach pastry thing and candy....way too much candy. but it looked good and it tasted good and we had been walking all morning so why not? anywho, here's a pic of a pear gummy candy thing that was amazing.


and that's the end of the sagunto festival. and i've decided that i'm going to stop promising to post events on time cause apparently it will never happen. but eventually, there will be an update of this week's trip to a monastery and zaragoza.