Noche de San Juan - Brian
The night of June 23rd is when the solstice is celebrated here in Spain; like all days here it has a name, Dia de San Juan. The night time is celebrated with a mix of fire and water and the contrast between those opposing elements. People build bonfires and swim in the ocean to cleanse themselves and the celebration continues well past dawn the next day.
Shannon and I were in Valencia with our friends Paul and Kim from Seattle to watch the America’s Cup sailing finals and had no idea what we were in for. Valencia is on the eastern coast of Spain, south of Barcelona, and has a wonderful beach – miles long and very wide and covered with fine sand; quite a treat for us as the beaches on the coast of Granada are typically rocky.
The night of the 23rd we all decided to go to the beach around 10pm. By “all” I don’t mean Shannon, Kim, Paul and I; I mean 20,000 people. The tram’s were packed beyond capacity and after a few stops we decided it was better to walk a couple miles rather than stay packed in the tram. We arrived at the beach around 11pm and saw a sight that rivaled Burning Man on the big party nights. According to the local paper 70,000 people were on the beach; my guess is more like 150,000. It was truly amazing. The beach was one huge mass of people dancing, talking, barbecuing and in general having a great time. There were more bonfires than it was possible to count and the scene continued as far as we could see in either direction. The beach was full of people, from very young children to grandparents; its wonderful to see entire families able to celebrate together like that!
The vibe of the crowd was very good and there were surprisingly few police or other officials around. In fact there was surprisingly little anything “official”, from beach bars to bathrooms to garbage cans, but the crowd was well behaved and we saw no troubles. The only thing that was disenchanting for us was the trash; as the tide came in throughout the early morning it picked up lots of trash from the beach and it was hard for us to see such pollution occurring.
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