Jumping feet-first into Valencian culture by participating alongside locals for the festivities of the night of San Juan
One of the coolest days in my entire trip was the day before the Festival of San Juan which sounds like nothing interesting happened the rest of the month (which is false) but even during that day I knew that it would be hard to top.
It began with education on what it was in class prior to the weekend, where we learned that the Festival of San Juan is a day to celebrate the summer solstice with several religious parades and processions during the day and setting up hogueras (small bonfires) on the beach to jump over seven times at night. Once midnight strikes, everyone jumps over seven waves in the ocean for good luck. Additionally, according to one of my friend’s host mom, it is also tradition to put three potatoes under your pillow when you slept that night: one peeled, one half-peeled, and one fully-peeled. The next morning, you are supposed to reach under your pillow to grab a potato that would determine your luck for the next year. A fully-peeled potato meant bad luck, an unpeeled potato meant good luck, and the half-peeled meant a year of ups and downs. However, I was not given any potatoes by my host mom (and I don’t think that I would want to sleep with bumpy slimy starch under my pillow anyways) so that tradition has yet to prove itself not antiquated.
It also began with my roommate and I deciding that we needed to get some things checked off of our bucket list that our university provided for us as a suggestion of things to do in Valencia. However, I am a very list-oriented person who needs to get everything done on any list handed to me, so I was very eager when my roommate suggested as doing something on it together the next morning. She happened to pick a cafe on the Plaza de la Reina called Cafe de Las Horas.
It also just so happened that as we headed towards the cafe, a parade was making its way through the plaza and around the Valencia Cathedral. According to a pamphlet that we were given (which we couldn’t read since it was written in Catalan), it was for the “Festivat del Corpus Christi” and was essentially a procession of the story of the Bible. There were adults dressed as the three wise men and dancing in giant heads, children dancing with maypoles and ribbons, a Virgin Mary riding a horse, and people playing instruments that looked like a piccolo-sized cross between a clarinet and an oboe. Our favorite part of the parade was the small girl dressed as Eve happily munching on an apple while her Adam hit the boy dressed as a snake.
After a fun breakfast at Cafe de Las Horas, eating lunch with our host family, and taking a siesta, I met with another group of friends back at the Plaza de La Reina for another procession that was happening with huge wooden floats decorated beautifully with religious figures and flowers. We were almost trampled by the heavily-decorated horses that were pulling the floats (“Arriba! Arriba! Arriba!”) but it was nice to see another type of procession when we weren’t near injury or being told to give up our seats for other people. Surprisingly, we were the youngest people in the crowd.
After attempting to read the Catalan-pamphlet with the schedule of the processions, we walked back towards the Valencia Cathedral in order to watch a parade featuring “gigantes” which are supposed to be large figures similar to ones from Las Fallas. However, after almost 45 minutes of us loudly talking and waiting for the stream of people walking out of the cathedral to be followed by the gigantes, we found out that we were actually at the religious procession that was happening at the same time. So much for attempting to be cultured students instead of misinformed tourists.
After we quickly weaved through the crowd to leave the procession, we decided to go straight to the beach, where crowds of people were already setting up small fires and blankets. It was relaxing watching the sun set as we talked, listened to the music that other groups were playing (one person brought a saxophone and was playing singular notes every-so often), and eating bocadillos (sandwiches in a baquette) on the beach.
When it got closer to midnight, my group of friends and I went up to a group of younger-looking people to ask if we could jump over their hogueras, to which they enthusiastically allowed us to. Afterwards, we had an animated Spanglish conversation with them with us trying to practice our Spanish and them trying to practice their English.
As soon as midnight struck, it was such an amazing thing to witness and join the locals with rushing towards the now-black ocean and jump seven waves. Especially for the first weekend here, it was such an incredible experience getting to be fully-immersed in a holiday and tradition that I had only heard about in the classroom before.
Cultural TL;DR: As usual, educate yourself on holidays and traditions. When attending, be respectful and observant (unlike how my friends and I accidentally were not), but don’t be afraid to join in and be a part of the experience!
An American in Valencia 