Skip to main content

It's Festa Time

Image
By Helen Lee Gray

The Festa is a big thing in Portugal, every village has their own Festa, some lasting a week but most take place over the weekend. The whole village or valley come together to walk the streets, watch the entertainment and drink! Now, I'm no expert (I have been to two so far), but I can see a theme.

1. Parade your religious/local hero icon
2. Hang around a bit
3. Listen to some wonderful local music
4. Wait for the entertainment to arrive, which is usually a singing group with very scantly clad women dancers! For example: Meet Nuno and the Nunetts, who performed at the Figueiró dos Vinhos Festa in June.


Or the girls who performed at the local Castanheira de Pera Festa.

The dances seem to be the same. Wave hands in the air (like you just don't care), wiggle at little, flick hair, repeat until fade!


These events are fantastic, local community getting together. It is something that is lacking in England I think, or at least something I didn't experience in London (Boat Race day is not the same).

Today at our local Festa in Castanheira de Pera we had some local dancing, none of this wiggles and flicks. It was great fun, a parade through town then performing different dances on stage to a audience that was a little too hot from the sun. The costumes were fantastic, and a real display of their local heritage, that everyone can enjoy and get the nostalgic feeling for past times that the Portuguese call - Saudades.


More Festa's next weekend. Looking forward to it....now all I need to do is work out this hair flick and I think I'm in the band!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Building our Barrel Vault Wood Fired Oven

By
This is a short description of my barrel vault build that I have done here in Central Portugal. The final internal size is a 1m squared floor with a arch height of 50cm. I hope you enjoy and get some ideas from it. I wish to thank ukwoodfiredovenforum  for their advice and support. • 1: First I dug out a hole in the flower bed, on top of the stone wall, where the oven was to be built • 2: Set up a form to pour in the concrete base • 3: Pour the concrete base, which was about 5-6 inches deep • 4: On top of the base I cast 4-5 inches of LECA (light weight expanded clay balls) mixed with cement to hold it's form • 5: Then I cast a 2-3 inch heat retaining base, to add to the thermal mass, using calcium aluminate cement with large grain sand, as a flat base for the hearth bricks to sit on • 6-8: I then dry laid the hearth bricks on a dry bed of fine sand and clay mixture, with th...
1 comment
Read more

oh what a lovely bougainvillea

By Helen Lee Gray
It was something I wanted to grow, a plant which would cover the wall, give shade, give colour and really stamp the fact we lived abroad.   Bougainvillea. We have the other Mediterranean type of plants growing; we have olives in abundance, we have the grapes thriving, we have the figs establishing, but alas no bougainvillea.    I looked up how to grow it and it says:   Bougainvillea thrives in full sun.   “At least 5 hours a day of direct sunlight is the minimal light required for good bloom. More hours of direct sun are better. Less than 5 hours and the plant may not bloom very well.”   5 hours of sun ‘check’, good light ‘check’, south facing ‘check’….but alas the Med we are not!   This little peak of Central Portugal has cold air in winter (snow even), a vigorous breeze at dusk and is prone to a late frost.   Our courtyard is just too exposed to the elements, there is no little ‘nook’ for a bougainvillea, there is no wall for it to climb...
2 comments
Read more

Chestnuts and Saints

By Helen Lee Gray
St. Martinho or St. Martin of Tours, became the first non-  martyr  saint to receive official church worship and became one of the most popular saints in medieval Europe. (Source wikipedia). His feast day is 11 November, deep into autumn and the chestnut season. In Portugal, as it's chestnut season 'Magustos'are celebrated in St. Martinho's name. A magusto is a group  of friends and/or family who get together and bake and eat chestnuts.  We have our village magusto at the weekend.  Meanwhile at home I've been celebrating the chestnut instead of the saint.  This 'celebration' involves collecting the chestnut harvest, splitting, cooking and shelling hundreds of these shiny brown chestnuts. Well, there's not much else to do on a wet Monday in these hills. Now I've got a bowl full of chestnuts I'm looking for recipes.  Here's what I've tried so far: Chestnut cake.  Made by using blitzed chestnuts instead of regular flo...
1 comment
Read more