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Author: Sergio González Ahedo.
Between the end of June and the beginning of July, white spots appear in the Basque mountains, because when the chestnut blossoms, it wears white. Given the importance of chestnut in our culture, this is a very important time of the year. All you have to do is ask those who work with bees. Proof of this is the testimony of Ignacio Abella collected in Galicia: it seems that when the chestnut blossoms, the ram breed the sheep. It is the last blossom before the intense heat of summer, which determines multiple labours of the rural world.
Saint John’s day in Gaztelugatxe, 2023. Labayru Foundation Photographic Archive.
With the arrival of summer, festivals are celebrated in all corners of our geography. During this time, apart from patron saint festivals of towns and cities, numerous festivals are also celebrated in the neighbourhood hermitages. In Bizkaia there are around 800 classified hermitages. It is true that not all of those that existed back in the day are preserved, and in many others, the celebrations have varied considerably. Ecclesiastical celebrations are maintained in 459 hermitages, 30 are deteriorated, another 7 are used for civil tasks, and the rest have disappeared. In the last century, society underwent profound changes and transformations that forced the hermitages themselves to adapt to the new needs of society.
Kutxa-entrega in Hondarribia (25/07/2022). Photo: E. X. Dueñas
According to the Dictionary of the Spanish language, the term “identity” has, among others, the meaning of “the set of natural characters of one individual or group, which characterizes them in comparison with others”, including the following synonyms: identification, affiliation and personality… To those, I would add two more acceptations: singularity and root (origin); without forgetting that identity also manifests itself in rivalry (healthy or unhealthy) in certain sports, celebrations, etc.
Annual festivities, and the ones celebrated during summer in particular, are filled with signs of identity and symbolic elements, general and specific; both from the material immaterial aspects. Who hasn’t heard the expressions “this is a lifelong festivity” or “this is not celebrated anywhere else”. We’ve already covered this topic in other articles from the blog.
Illustration from the work Euskalerriaren Yakintza.
There are two appropriate dates in the calendar for miraculous solutions: the solstices of the year.
On this occasion we shall refer to the summer solstice, or what is the same, the night before St. John’s Day, associated to having great potential for extraordinary solutions which exceeded all natural logic and order.
One of the usual rites of that night aimed at curing herniated children. They were kids whose guts were partially eviscerated by a tear of the peritoneal membrane. They usually had a lump in the lower abdomen, often in the groin, where the thigh joins the lower belly. This injury could bring very serious consequences, including the possibility of death.
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