Fiesta de las Cruces by mia

For the last week there has been a continuous mini carnival in the main square of our little town, the neighboring little town, and every other town or city in the entire country of Spain. We got Monday and Tuesday of this last week off from school (hence our ability to go to Morocco and Barcelona last weekend) because of the huge party that was being had all over the country.

The big weeklong party is called Fiesta de las Cruces, and it involves lots of dancing, drinking, dressing up, and every thing else that makes for a fun time. When we talked to our landlady, Carmen about it she said that it was actually a religious party, but now its just turned into a normal party (like pretty much any religious holiday). What they still do that keeps up the religious part, is build and decorate crosses. The one in our central square was covered with roses and around it everyone put big pots of flowers, decorative plates and other pretty things. They set it up on the big trellised platform, and the whole setup took up pretty much the entire area. It looked really nice with all the flowers everywhere.

Another part of the party in our town was a nice mini carnival complete with bumper cars, a throw up ride, a carousel, a bouncy castle, and giant cotton candy. This carnival was set up at the beginning of last week and is just being taken down now! There was also an outdoor bar and a stage set up in the square. Zander and I were walking to school on the morning after the biggest party night, when they had just taken down the bar and the square looked trashed!! There was all sorts of trash and "party residue" all over the place. We were both like, wow looks like some people had a lot of fun last night!

We walked to the neighboring town, Armilla, to check out their celebrations too. On the way we noticed that many of the restaurants and businesses had their own decorated crosses, either outside by the door, or inside somewhere. We saw some made of corks, bottles, and one out of cake boxes! The party in Armilla had two bars set up and pretty much the same carnival set up as Churriana, if not a bit bigger.

The cutest part of this party was the dressing up part. Everyone dressed up in those crazy looking flamenco dresses and put flowers in their hair. There were the most adorable little girls were running around all decked out in fluffy pink polka dotted dresses with matching shoes and earrings!! It was awesome. The little girls would go up on the stage and do little flamenco dances with other kids. The boys were all dressed up too, in button downs and hats.

We walked through the party a lot but we only went there to party once. It was kind of a bummer that we picked the one day that it rained as the day that we would finally enjoy the festivities! We had drinks and tapas and were going to go on bumper cars or something,but then it started raining and we decided to head home. After the party week was over there was a little artisan market set up along the street next to the main square. It sold all sorts of things, from jewelry to cheese, but we only walked through it once. There were stalls selling big hunks of cheese, stalls selling all sorts of different jewelry, pastries, spices, tea, and random wooden trinkets. I really liked the spices because they smelled really yummy and there was mint chocolate tea, which I have never seen before!

The Fiesta de las Cruces was a really cool holiday, very Spanish. The fact that it kept going for about a week was the best thing, because there aren't really any like that in the US. I also really liked the dressing up (so cute!) and especially the fact that it gave us a four day weekend! I hope there are lots more huge parties around here.

PS Two of the pictures are random because we don't have many of the party (though mommy did try to take pics of some little girls who were all dressed up, but we got her not to because that would be slightly creepy...)

Pictures:

Guess which one is of me driving!! That lasted for a fee minutes in an empty parking lot. We had to stop because we saw a cop. We learned that that me+Standard driving= lots of bucking broncos..... My car is going to be an automatic for everyone's safety!!!

The one of momma is at the Armilla party.

The lovely palm tree lined promenade is the famous marble walkway along the beach on Alacante. We had some good frozen yogurt there... :)