This week in the teaching sector of Galicia, everyone's looking forward to that mega-long weekend. Since December 6th and 8th are public holidays in Spain, this year Galicia took the 7th as its yearly bonus day off, to create a superpuente. Two day work week!
This time of year, I am reminded of the long December weekend right before the pandemic when I went to the
Foliada da Fonsagrada. A
foliada is any gathering to play and dance to Galician folk music. In the village of Fonsagrada, their annual dayslong celebration attracts tons of people from all around Galicia. Won't be going back this year, but this past weekend we went to a little family foliada. It was a surprise birthday party hosted in a stone structure, now used as a cellar, but 100 years ago was likely the house. The five-person band strode in playing, dressed in their Galician garb. The group included bagpipers, drummers, and an accordionist. For hours, they sang and played melodies for the musical guests to sing songs that the band didn't even recognize. In addition to lots of enthusiastic clapping, there was also dancing: with partners or in circles. The whole time I kept thinking how
enxebre the evening was.
Enxebre is a Galician way of saying typical, authentic, something pure (Galician).
Adding to my delight, I found out that one of the guests went to high school where I was first assigned as an auxiliar de conversación. Obviously, because she was around my age, I knew we hadn't been there at the same time. But it turns out, her brother had been in one of my first classes! I couldn't get over it. It's a small world after all! Then suddenly it dawned on her-- she had heard of me way back when, either from her brother or one of their neighbors. I felt proud. Almost famous.
