Vitoria-Gasteiz is the second largest city in the Basque Country and also its administrative capital. It's located between the coastal cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian but 30 miles inland, so a long drive away. Travellers thus generally ignore it in favour of the better known tourist traps but that would be a mistake, especially if you turn up at festival time like I did. I have rarely seen quite so many people having quite so much fun for quite so long quite so late, and I merely turned up on Day Four.
From the smallest village to the largest city, all Basque communities have a festival of some kind. Vitoria-Gasteiz has two, kicking off at the end of April to celebrate San Prudencio, the patron saint of the province of Álava. But they go really big in summer for the city's patron, the Virgen Blanca, whose six day bonanza sees everyone hit the streets for an imbalanced mix of religion and revelry. Day 1 is always August 4th (whatever the day of the week), and not a lot of work gets done in the city until the man with the umbrella returns to the sky.
This is Andre MariaZuriaren plaza, or Virgen Blanca Square, but not at time of maximum merrymaking. The green letters are to celebrate Vitoria-Gasteiz being chosen as European City of Culture in 2012 in recognition of its unusually ecological suburbs. During festival week they shift the letters round the corner where they won't get knocked, so everyone ignores them, whereas I spent at least five minutes waiting for families to stop posing in front and/or guzzling from the adjacent water fountain.
The official start to the festivities comes at 6pm on August 4th, at which point the square is absolutely rammed with Basque youth and sturdier members of the community. I watched on YouTube from the safety of home and was glad not to be in the hormonal wine-soaked crush. As the bell of San Miguel strikes six a mannequin is set loose from the top of the tower and starts a slow descent by rope across the full width of the square. He's called Celedón, always sports a beret and an umbrella, and represents the spirit of a local peasant conjured up by the first organisers in 1957. His precipitous journey eventually ends at a first-floor window above a bank, disappearing through a curtain to reappear as a human actor who then proceeds to make the reverse journey across the square on foot. Mass drinking ensues, but elsewhere because within minutes the street cleaners have moved in to clear the square ready for a religious procession. Mad but brilliant.
By the time we arrived the citizens of Vitoria-Gasteiz had been partying for three evenings and three nights, some of the hardier souls surviving round the clock. And yet there were still crowds in the street, specifically a snaking procession of cuadrillas making music and making merry. The cuadrilla is a collective peculiarity of Basque society, a group of friends who stick together for socialising almost to the exclusion of all others. Some are formed at elementary school where the class essentially becomes the social unit for the next three decades, others evolve in geographical locations. At festival time 23 cuadrillas with musical prowess or a particular penchant for hijinks come out to play jovial brass tunes they must have spent months practising, and/or to drink from the backs of vans as they wander the streets and generally entertain the crowds. For some reason there is almostalways a tuba.
It's all about the dressing up with each cuadrilla having a different style. Some go black and yellow, others go red or turquoise and a fair few go all-out Basque in light blue with a beret. Many women are out on the streets in a blouse and long skirt (which makes them "neskak") whereas males sport a blue blouse, trousers tucked into white socks and clog-like shoes tied with high laces (which makes them "blusas"). Neckerchiefs are extremely common, either the blue and white check of Eusakia or the prouder bright red of Vitoria-Gasteiz. A lot of male youths have visited the barber recently for a half-shorn haircut some might describe as daringly inadvisable, perhaps as a collective rite of passage. Come any other week and everyone's in shorts and t-shirts but during Virgen Blanca a full-on Basque stereotype prevails and it is joyous.
The serious drinking takes place in the old town, a compact zone generally described as having an almond shape. Four concentric streets are so rammed with bars that they can cope with the most serious influx of boozers, but also so narrow that a single group of partygoers can force very slow progress. There are also cultural events scattered throughout, so for example a heavy metal band might play in Machete Square (where beheadings were once sanctioned) while a 70s covers band in spangly silver entertains the oldies in Spanish Square. So engrained is the gratification that you can even find tuba processions in the middling suburbs in the early hours, where any resident likely to be disturbed has already fled the city for an annual holiday.
At 11pm nightly a firework display takes on Monte De La Tortilla, a raised grass oval to the south of town. A crowd gathers to enjoy 15 minutes of bright flashes (if nothing flash), then makes its way down the hill to the enormous funfair in what's normally a car park. As well as the usual rides and sideshows the offering includes dozens of stalls dispensing food and refreshment, for example two stomping automatons notionally pressing the season's grapes for a glass of mildly-warmed wine. The most Spanish stall I saw was a meat tombola offering prizes of huge haunches of ham, also hunks of pate, chorizo and cheese as consolation. Watch your phone if you visit because dozens get stolen, whereas the worst crime we suffered was being charged 15€ for a plate of chips. And they were still singing along to Boney M in the city centre after we schlepped back at 1am, and who's to say we shouldn't have stayed out even longer.
The UK has no equivalent to this six-day Basque festival. The Notting Hill Carnival perhaps comes close in terms of all-out dressed-up on-street revelry, even if the food and music are completely different, while Pride is as colourful and as boisterous but too much of a rally and too commercial. The joy of the Virgen Blanca is that the festivities are pure with no agenda, just a population letting its hair down in midsummer with as much alcohol, culture and collective glee as it can muster. The trick is to stay resilient and pace yourself until Celedón returns to his tower late on 9th August when the city mutes again, at least until next year.
