Time for yet another holiday here in Andalucia. That's right, February 28th is a day to celebrate. It's Andalucia Day thanks to this region's founding father, Blas Infante, the man whose ideas eventually served to make this region the separate autonomous community it is today.
I have a confession to make, and blogs seem to be the fashionable place to confess these days: I am not a purist. I love fusion - flamenco fusion, that is. And why not? I know there is a movement pushing to preserve the heart and soul of traditional flamenco, and that's fine by me. There's nothing wrong with hanging on to Andalucian traditions, saving and preserving them for posterity.
The big news this week is that someone - some lucky someone, or perhaps more than one someone - from the tiny town of Montefrio, Granada, has won the "Euromillones" lottery. At over 76 million euros, this is the biggest, fattest lottery prize yet to land on a Spanish town.
How often do we hear of yet another family that has moved to southern Spain because it's such a great place to raise children? Families from northern Europe and North America are especially charmed by the warmth of this family-centred Mediterranean society. It's hard not to notice how children are accepted wherever we go - at restaurants and other public venues - at all hours of the night and day. Many of us feel like we've taken a trip back in time to a friendlier era where things were "different"... better perhaps?
Lately I've been studying the way festivals are celebrated throughout Andalucia. It's often interesting to see how one single festival is celebrated differently from one town or city to another. To be honest, at first glance, all the carnivals looked alike to me, as did all the ferias or semana santas.