Castellón

10 March 2012

This morning, I caught the train heading to Castellón to meet up with a fellow Fulbrighter and check out the celebration that will start there today--called the Magdalena.

Castellón is another province--in addition to Valencia and Alicante--that makes up the Autonomous Community of Valencia. The capital of the province is the city of Castellón--a city with approximately 180,000 people--making it smaller than the city of Alicante.

La Magdalena is a 9 day festival celebrated each year in Castellón which marks the historical movement of the city from the mountain to Castellón's current location on the plain in the 13th century.





The festival began today with the inauguration of the queen of the Magdalena and was immediately followed by the cabalgata del pregón (parade).







The cabalgata included different groups/floats representing Castellón's history, traditions, and folklore, I'm not entirely sure how each part was related to Castellón's history, but I didn't really get the opportunity to ask an expert.










The following pictures (I think) are from the historical part--including the Arabic, Christian, Jewish, and Pirate influences.

 I don't have pictures of this, but there were also groups of people representing the historical relationship between Aragón and Castellón. There were different dancers doing a traditional dance from Aragón.

There were also a group of men who did a dance with swords and an object similar to a cymbal. They danced in circles--crossing their swords and hitting each others cymbals. They must have a lot of practice--because it looked like if you made a mistake you could hurt someone!

The cabalgata is supposed to last around 4 hours! We didn't end up staying for the whole parade, but we did see most of the parade.

Throughout the day, we saw a TON of (unsupervised) kids with firecrackers and other fireworks. It nearly gave me an anxiety attack to hear all of the firecrackers at such close range. I was sure that some firecracker might end up near my feet and take out a couple of toes!

That night, we had a perfect view of the fireworks display from my friend's apartment. We joked that the fireworks made us feel oddly patriotic even though we're in Spain. I guess we're just conditioned to feel that way because of Independence Day!

Then, we walked around town to check out the live concerts happening in various plazas around the city!