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Dancing and partying. Painting by José Arrue.

The annual festive cycle is known to comprise solar celebrations of fixed date and festivities of variable character (ruled by the full moon of Easter Sunday). We might likewise distinguish between major feasts (St John, Corpus Christi, patron saints’ days…), or commemorations of generic origin and great importance in the diverse Christian liturgies, and minor feasts, punctual observances, or popular local devotions (saints’ days, Marian apparitions, miracles, rogations…), observed in neighbourhoods, parishes and peripheral places of worship.

In this context, traditional patron saint festivities concentrate in the summer season (symbol of a time of prosperity and abundance), rather than throughout the year, beginning with the feast of St John (24 June) and ending immediately after St Michael’s festival (29 September). The social structuring of the community and its organized interactions being reflected in them all, they are usually governed by a common and fairly deep-rooted scheme which we shall now try to unravel.

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