We miss dancing, free and without measuring distances
There is one week of the year that rhymes especially well with words like charanga, verbena, lunch, cellar, fifths, revelry, carefree and reunions. During that week, the one with The 15th of August between his days, ours towns, yours and mine, dress up party.
With the village festivals it happens as with the potato tortillas: we all know who does the best. And as with tortillas, no arguments are needed to justify our statement. How are you going to explain to someone what it feels like to go back to the summers of your childhood, your adolescence or, without going too far, last year? It can't be done. It lives. It is like that, period.
How special they are there are those who organize their holidays around them so as not to miss anything.
It is on those days when Spain emptied it ceases to be a little less and when any town gains in beauty. Not so much for the pennants that the budget allows to decorate its streets, but for the joy and light that come from seeing children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren return home.
Many of them are received from year to year and, although we have learned that video calls serve to not forget the faces, there is nothing that replaces a good hug and catching up with family and friends as it has always been done: wine or beer through.
They say that in the towns, and more so at parties, you drink too much; and I always answer that it is normal, that 365 days go a long way and that among the news to tell there may be drinks that are difficult to digest and news that has to be toasted.
But, be careful, do not try to impress. Little is going to matter that newly released promotion, the family that you begin to form or that you have obtained a chalet in property. You will always continue to be 'the girl from', 'the boy from', 'the one from the bakery' or 'the one from the bar'.
It has neither mystery nor loss. Leave behind where you came from to focus on the reality of where we are.
This could lead us to fall into the trap of believing, as Serrat sang, in the equal power of the party. But friends, let's not fool ourselves, there have always been classes here. Or are you going to tell me that a rock with a sofa is the same as without it?
Here you are nobody if you do not know how to defend yourself in the pasodoble
Oh, if those sofas could talk. If those sofas could talk, the first thing they'd say is that they need cleaning. Then we would have to buy their silence because village festivals are the homeland of many first times.
The first sunrise with friends, the first drinks, the first night of partying with no time to go home because the town is already home, everyone knows each other and there is nothing to worry about. The first time a bathrobe and flippers helped you out on a spree because you know when the costume contest begins, but the line that marks its end becomes blurred. The same goes for bingo cards, that you get mixed up in one game with another and you don't dare say it out loud because bingo has become more sacred than the procession and the only thing that silences the square.
How silent that square is going to be this year...
We miss dancing, free and without measuring distances. We miss jumping like crazy when Pagan Party plays; sing loudly Torero; pay attention to the singer of the orchestra when he asks us for impossible movements to the rhythm of Paquito, the chocolatier; what if, We also miss dancing 'agarraos', which is what is done in any self-respecting village verbena. Here you are nobody if you don't know how to defend yourself in a double pass.
And when the dance ends, because it always ends; after the last night of verbena, we return to our life, to what happens between the party of one year and the next, mired in obligations of concrete and asphalt and with the feeling that the towns and their festivals should not be just for the summer.