St Merce

This weekend was a huge fiesta here in Barcelona. Probably the largest of the year. It was the celebration of La Merce, who is the patroness of barcelona. There were about a million events all weekend including fireworks everynight, lots and lots of live music, a small carnival and parades. Friday night the festival was opened by the procession of these huge giant puppets. They all walked to one of the placas where they then took turns dancing on the stage. They were very tall, so you could still see their dances to the live orchestra behind them over the millions of people. We ended up trying to walk somewhere but got sucked in by another parade with lots of drum lines and other mythical beats being carried on peoples back. Towards the end of the parade myself as well as ALL OF BARCELONA joined in this parade and danced down the street to the placa where it was surrposed to end up. It was probably took a good 45minutes to walk a few blocks. It was like post 3rd of July fireworks times 4 as far as the size of the crowd, but everyone was happy and dancing and singing and chanting and it was suprising less scary then you would think.

The cherry on top of this whole festival is the FIRE RUN on saturday night. This is a parade with all the same mythical creatures as the earlier parades, except now they're spitting fire and fire crackers into the crowds and audience and making a hell of alot noise and smoke. You cant go to this parade unless every inch of your body is covered. There were little kids with bandanas over their faces and people with crazy layers. The demons would walk by holding these huge staffs with fire crackers/dynamite? attached to the ends and would like them and send sparks everywhere. If youre man enoguh you run into the street and dance under the sparks and risk losing all your hair. The slightly less brave ones stand on the side covering their mouths form the sulfur smoke and risk the occasional crazy demon who will jsut run off the parade route and light their fire crackers off in the middle of the scared women and children. It was absolutly crazy. I had a little skin showing so I didnt feel capable of dancing RIGHT under the fire, but I did get a few sparks on me. I cant get over it, they were just shooting fire into large groups of people. it seems like some sort of liability issue or SOMETHING.

Today is the last day of the festival and its slightly more tame. I think the only thing going on tonight is the largest of the fire works displays. Im a little fired out so i dont know if ill make it, but im sure it will be spectacular.