Spanish Festival

In the heart of London, Reagent Street was closed on a sunny day for the annual Spanish Festival. Yes- we went to another festival! As per usual on a sunny day, there were thousands of English people looking around. The festival was a celebration of Spain but I really think it was tourism trade to Spain. For us, there were 2 highlights of the day – Catalunya and Paella.

Catalunya – human tower building as practised in Catalonia. About 200 people dressed in uniform gathered together and started speaking in Spanish getting themselves organised. There was shouting and chatting and a whole lot of commotion. After about 10 minutes people grouped together, had someone in front of them put their arms over the person’s shoulder in front holding their forearms. About 200 stocky people did this in a big circle facing inwards (the base of the human tower). Then 4 people climbed on circle and formed the 2nd level (from the ground) then the next 4 (slightly smaller people) climbed on the 2nd levels shoulders and linked arms. After a few more stories were complete a little girl wearing a cycle helmet (maybe about 8) climbed up like a monkey with her legs curled around people’s legs and arms as she climbed. Once she got to the top she waved and smiled.

The next highlight was the free food provided by the festival. Paella a traditional Spanish dish made with rice, vegetables and chicken. We crowded around watching the chefs prepare it in this huge ‘paellera’ pan about 3 meters wide. They stirred it with 7 foot long flippers as it cooked over a fire. There were 1000s of people watching. Finally, after they had tested it, sauces were turned over and the paiala was judged ready. As they were coming to the conclusion of the cooking it became apparent that the security staff had not actually organised a method for distributing the free food. There was no queue and a couple of thousand people were surrounding the cooking area. You can imagine what it is like with 2000 people all vying for some free food. When they finally established an origin for the line (on the other side of where we were standing) the pushing began. I managed to keep in the line but Louise got further and further away from me. Two old English ladies were starting to swear as people were pushing and a Spanish lady was yelling at the security guards and people who had waited 40 mins (like us) weren’t even moving in the line whereas those who happened to walk past were joining the line and getting served within 10 minutes. The guards threatened to stop serving as there was too much pushing. I managed to get through after 45 minutes and Louise gave up but I got 2 plates. As they were cooking it, I could see the chefs scraping up burnt parts and I said to Louise that it wouldn’t taste very good as it was too big to have flavour and seeing all the burnt bits. However, I was totally wrong, it was delicious. The chicken was tender and the rice was great. To top it off they must have fed at least 3000 people with great food.