The Iberian Horseshoe — A Journey

Early Feb­ru­ary, and the lo­cals pre­pare to cel­e­brate the end of win­ter. Car­ni­val pro­vides a bridge be­tween Christ­mas and East­er, and a chance for chil­dren and adults alike, to dress up and party. Shy­ness and re­straint play no part in the Cádiz Car­ni­val.

In a lounge, in the block op­po­site ours, grown men dressed up like Du­ra­cell bun­nies were drink­ing red wine. They were watch­ing the cav­al­cade wind its way down the aveni­da de An­dalucía. Con­fet­ti, thrown from bal­conies cre­at­ed a World Cup Final at­mos­phere. So out we went to fol­low the cav­al­cade into the city cen­tre where the streets were turn­ing into an al­co­hol-fu­elled fi­es­ta. I could not stay out for long. It wasn’t that I want­ed to drink. I had no de­sire to regress. I had learned to look be­yond the first drink and could see the con­se­quences of what was like­ly to fol­low. In­stead, I would be able to run along the beach the next day while the ma­jor­i­ty suf­fered the af­ter-ef­fects. But I still need­ed an es­cape route from an al­co­holic at­mos­phere. Why don’t we offer the free seat next to us on pub­lic trans­port to a drunk? Part­ly be­cause drunk­en hu­mour is only amus­ing to the ine­bri­at­ed.

So I re­turned home to watch high­lights on Canal Sur, the An­dalu­sian TV sta­tion. Among the Car­ni­val’s var­i­ous en­ter­tain­ers were the chirig­o­tas. The of­fi­cial ver­sion of events is that these groups play reed whis­tles and tour the town singing hi­lar­i­ous and top­i­cal satires. My un­der­stand­ing of the An­dalu­sian di­alect did not ex­tend to top­i­cal satire and the whole thing seemed a rather male dom­i­nat­ed event to me; most­ly choirs of mid­dle-aged men in tra­di­tion­al garb, some­thing like a bar­ber­shop quar­tet, singing their hearts out in an at­tempt to win the week’s top prize. Each man was armed with a kazoo, and prac­ti­cal­ly every verse of song was fol­lowed by a loud blast on this most base of in­stru­ments.

Mary and I walked along the es­planade, night after night, pass­ing the old town’s city walls and into the bar­rio de Santa Cruz. This was where Lau­rie Lee once saw some­body howl­ing on a rooftop. The man was pre­tend­ing to be a ghost in order to scare the land­lord and get the local rents re­duced. Mary won­dered if Juan might be­lieve in ghosts.

“Prob­a­bly not at Car­ni­val time,” I said.

In plaza de las Flo­res, sand sculp­tors took the place of flower stalls. They had trans­port­ed a ton or two of sand from the beach in order to prof­it from the oc­ca­sion. The crowd was shout­ing and singing and stuff­ing their faces full of oys­ters, sea urchins and booze. It be­came al­most im­pos­si­ble to walk with­out stand­ing on bro­ken bot­tles un­der­foot. The party went on for a cou­ple of weeks and when it was all over young trav­ellers from all over Eu­rope were re­luc­tant to leave. Some of them stayed on, play­ing penny whis­tles on the streets and danc­ing for money. Off the square I could hear the dis­tant strains of a fid­dle. Bro­ken bot­tles and ka­zoos lay in the gut­ter until the clean­ers came along and scrubbed away the al­co­hol and music.