Alicante: Light my Fire

When we left Valencia, we decided to rent a car. Over the last few days the conversation about renting a car had gone like this. Shane would suggest we rent a car. I would refuse. Shane would suggest it again. I would try and talk him out of it. Then Shane suggested it again, and finally, I agreed. I knew it would give us more freedom and allow us to visit some more rural locations. But that’s not to say I wasn’t nervous about driving in Spain.

I was nervous for two reasons.

First reason: Driving. Seeing the way the Spanish navigate the four lane roundabouts and streets so narrow that you have to turn in your side mirrors is enough to make my whole body cringe and tense muscles I didn’t even know I had.

Second reason: Parking. Cars are crammed in blocks like sardines. People tend to do things like this:



My informal poll found the percentage of cars with bangs and dents on them was about 60%. We’re talking some serious scrapes. If we were renting a car, we were definitely buying all the insurance we could get.

We headed south down the coast. We decided to bed down for the night in Alicante, and as we rolled into town we realized we had hit another festival. We saw temporary food stands set up, road blockades, and many people milling about.

Great! Our uniformed traveller’s luck had struck again and we learned we had arrived for Hogueras de San Juan. During the festival various artists are commissioned to build giant paper mache statues, one for each of Alicante’s 86 barrios (neighbourhoods). We strolled through the streets, eating churros, and looking at the different colorful statues. The statues are massive. Shane wondered aloud where they could be kept all year round.



Since we were bagged from the previous night’s excursion we decided to head to bed early. We were cosy in bed and flipping through the various channels on the tv when we caught a news station. The station was showing footage of one of the statues we had seen earlier…in flames! The news broadcaster didn’t seem shocked by the flames at all, instead, the whole thing seemed planned, the flames joyous, and the party seemed far from over.

A quick google search revealed that starting at midnight the organizers begin to burn down the statues as firemen move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood to orchestrate the blaze.

We could see a statue from our hotel room and decided we needed to see the burning for ourselves.

I think it was around 2am when a crowd started to form around the statue. The firemen arrived and set up all the firehoses so they could control the burning.

We could see the statue was wrapped with strings of firecrackers. Suddenly, the street lights were turned off, and the crowd began to cheer. The firecrackers (loudly) started to ignite the statue, and when the smoke dissipated enough, you could see the flames begin to engulf it.






Finally, when the flames were low enough, the fireman extinguished them. You’d think that would be enough excitement for the day, but not for the Spanish!

At this point, as is customary, the crowd began to shout insults at the firemen, taunting them and provoking them until finally they turned the hose on the crowd. And we’re not talking a light sprinkling here folks, we’re talking full super soaker action!



As the spray began to near us Shane covered our camera with a scarf hoping to shield it from errant droplets and shouted “RUN”!.

And run we did, back to our hotel, exhausted from another night of fire.