Arriba Arribada

‘Padre, Padre, me quiero confesar,’a Spanish man flings himself at my feet and begs me in slurred Gallego to hear his confession.  He is only the second drunk Spanish man to do exactly this today but it’s still the morning so anything could happen.  I smile politely, make a vague sign of the cross in the air and join the crowd jostling their way through the narrow streets.  I glance back to see him give a last entreaty before returning grinning to his friends and his drink.  Five minutes later, we are ambushed by another inebriated would-be confessor.  He grabs my leg, throws back his head and launches into the familiar routine, ‘Padre, Padre…’

I am in north-west Spain, just above Portugal, walking the narrow medieval streets of old town of Baiona.  My presence has not suddenly overwhelmed the Galician locals with pious guilt and filled them with the desire to confess their sins.  It is just that I am dressed in a monk’s habit (a Dominican Friar, I think) and am walking the streets of their town with two other similarly dressed men – Brothers Arj and Kirb, we’ll call them.  The three of us spent part of our formative years at a school in Yorkshire run by Benedictine Monks so you might be forgiven for assuming that we have grown up to become secret weekend missionaries, donning our brown habits and spreading messages of fire, brimstone and forgiveness among the Spanish heathen.  Although I can’t speak for Kirb and Arj with 100% confidence, I can tell you that I am no secret man of the cloth.  In fact, eighty per cent of the people around me are dressed in the garb of a similar era and the other twenty per cent, frankly, look a bit silly.  They are not entering into the spirit of Baiona’s Festa da Arribada.

Arribada means ‘arrival’ in Gallego, the dialect of nearly everyone around me.  The particular arrival that they are celebrating with this Festa is that of Martin Pinzon and his ship, the Pinta, one of the three that set sail with Christopher Columbus en route to discovering the New World.  Not only was the Pinta the first to reach it in October 1492, but it beat the others back to the Iberian Peninsula too.  On 1^st March 1493, Pinzon brought the Pinta into the bay of Baiona and announced the discovery of the New World to the people of Spain, scooping Columbus himself by several months.

He picked the perfect place for it.  I have no doubt that the people of Baiona, on hearing his announcement, would have stopped what they were doing and thrown the most enormous party to celebrate.  Even now, five hundred and eighteen years later, they are still celebrating.  On the first weekend in March every year, thousands of people flock to Baiona in all manner of medieval costumes and take to the streets.  Bars open all day and street traders wallpaper the old town with rough wooden stalls selling local foodstuffs and replica medieval weaponry. 

For the last three years, Kirb and I have joined in, using the weekend as an opportunity to catch up with Arj who has settled there with his Baiona-born wife, Maria, and two children.  Awoken by cannon fire each morning, we spend the weekend walking the streets in costumes rented from the little stone-fronted shops that open only for those two days in the year.  We trawl the stalls for delicious traditional food and gather outside bars for beers and sangria in clay bowls, serenaded by roving gaiteros bands. 

We bump into affectionate old friends and familiar faces from previous visits.  Arj has his cheeks squeezed by a jamonerie owner with jowls down to his collar bone.  Kirb is patted fondly on the back by the new barman at Portiko, our favourite Baiona bar, on whom he has already made an impression.  We find Ramon, veteran of many of our Baiona nights, being embraced by a thickly moustachioed man in a leather jerkin at his favourite bacalao (cod) stand.  Off the main drag we stop at a bar, sitting down on a stone wall while a mob of children play around us.  Whenever one comes within reach of an adult, they are scooped up and kissed and hugged.  Ramon, his wife Rebecca and their two children all wear perfectly matching costumes.  I find myself thinking of the Von Trapp family in their play clothes cut from the same curtains. 

We are joined by Pepa, the wife of Alberto, with whom we spent the previous night, dining on monkfish and gigantic gambones and drinking obscenely large whiskies in Portiko.  We are told Alberto is still in bed.  ‘Que flojo’, Ramon dismisses him, using what I gather is a fairly graphic term for a someone who can’t take their drink - the same one in fact that he used on me when I left the bar at gone one-thirty that morning.  Poor Alberto is obviously deeply affected by our Friday night together and misses the whole of Arribada, to his wife’s shame.  His daughter Teresa seems unphased by the loss of her papa and charges around the medieval playground with Arj’s daughter Mariana, having their faces painted, sitting in a giant swinging boat and gasping in delight at the display of geese, pigs and ponies by the waterfront.  Arribada is well set up for kids and they all come in costume.  I see Princesses, Maid Marians, Knights Templar, even numerous miniatures in my own Dominican Friar costume.  There is also a Spiderman.

We arrive at the main square in time for a performance by Peter Punk, a coxcomb-clad clown with an uncanny resemblance to Joaquin Phoenix.  He abuses the audience, condemns the government in a thick Gallego accent and rides around on a six inch bicycle, clown shoes splayed wide from the pedals.  He spends half an hour winding up a local woman before stripping to an old style swimsuit, vigrously rubbing his nipples and stepping in to take her place in a Heath Robinson contraption that empties two water buckets over his head and slaps him in the face with a spring-loaded foam hand covered in whipped cream.

Up the hill, we pause for pulpo.  A giant cauldron simmers with tentacles.  Beside it, a woman in a brown tunic lined with gold snips the octopus into bite-sized chunks, douses them in virgin olive oil and peppers them with paprika before dishing them up on wooden plates to the waiting queue. 
  

 

A lady in green velvet adjusts the brocaded bonnet of a toddler in a pushchair.  A cobbler is hand-making shoes while tourists pose for photos in a giant pair beside the stall.  A beautiful girl passes us in a wimple and aviator sunglasses.  A squire in doublet and hose wields an enormous digital camera.  A knight with a pierced eyebrow watches a leather-aproned blacksmith hammer a metal knife on his anvil before thrusting it into a fire which his cowled assistant keeps hot with a six foot pair of bellows.

A frenzied beat approaches as half a dozen minstrel drummers escort a pair of lurid stilt-walkers through the streets.  They swoop down on unsuspecting mothers and gather up their children or snatch sun hats from the heads of Knights of the Crusades.  ‘A baixo’, one of the drummers urges us to the ground and we all drop to one knee as the walkers march up and down until the beat gathers and forces us to our feet as one and we follow the stilt walkers off towards the main square before Maria is distracted by a marrucho stand where the crepes are supposedly the best in Galicia.  There is a Cardinal standing there holding a beer and chatting up a serving wench and a witch.  Feeling outranked, we friars slink away.

On the beach we watch a display of jousting and general gallantry.  Boldly coloured horses and their riders thunder up and down the beach, spearing hanging rings with their jousting sticks and hurling spears into targets in front of a bursting grandstand.  The crowd gathered around are given coloured napkins to wave for their favourite knight who returns triumphant to his chosen corner to enjoy their cheers after each feat.  ‘El Caballero Negro’ the black rider is putting up a strong fight but ‘El Caballero Amarillo’ (yellow) is obviously in serious difficulty on a huge and skittish horse, plunging with alarm in every direction but the right one.  Unconcerned by the danger, the Spanish crowd laugh at the sight.

At the Boquerie, we discuss marriage and beards over beers while the kids play with my camera over the fountain.  Arj keeps us supplied with plates of tortilla, churrasco de cerdo (pork ribs) and criollo (chorizo sausages) barbequed a la plancha. 

Over the road a beautiful woman with a garlanded brow is juggling with sticks on a cord and off towards the beach all we can hear are the bubbling whistle of dozens of bird callers.  Men in tunics and jerkins cluster around upended barrels and drink Estrella.  A jester in faded technicolour juggles three equally faded technicolour balls then bares a set of hamster teeth and offers his cheeks out for a kiss.  He looks crestfallen as children shy away from him.  A man in an owl mask with a pinched beak plays what looks like a wind-up violin.  He nods a greeting to a man in thick leather gloves with an owl sitting malevolently on one wrist.  A stilt-walker returns and siezes an inflatable mace from a knight in a black cape, pretending to lay about him with it. 

As the dusk looms, Brother Arj, Brother Kirb, Maria, Ramon, Rebecca and a small swarm of costumed children wander down to the sea front, hanging exhausted over the railings.  Hoots, whistles, drum beats, cannon fire and excited Gallego chatter echo over the water.  In the harbour is moored a fully seaworthy replica of the Pinta.  It is now a regular tourist attraction all year round.  A sailor in a white smock hangs off the rigging and points towards Baiona.  I like to think that it is Martin Pinzon, enjoying the party that he and Columbus started so many years ago.