Tarrega

It was a reunion of sorts. FiraTarrega 2011. The jugglers, the break dancers, the acrobats, pole climbers, trapeze artists, actors, dancers, tight rope walkers, beat boxers, clowns, puppeteers, gypsies, hippies, circus performers, street musicians, visual artists. The three guys who connect their piano to a fountain, a stream of water with every note. The guys who make a building burn with their computer and a projector just after midnight. The two clowns who make hundreds laugh from down in their belly with just a camera. The couple that turns a roll of tape into a forty-five minute performance with acrobatics and love. They are the great grandchildren of Gaudi and Dali and so many others whose names I don't yet know. They are erasing the barriers between reality and dreams, between performer and audience, between stage and sidewalk. Sometimes they do it abruptly, like two clowns stopping traffic to look at a two-square-meter map and call the police on the driver to report the license plate of the impatient car while a gaggle of a thousand spectators follow in the street. Sometimes they are subtle, like the lady who paints herself into a doorway and sits motionless. They are acts of art and protest. Feats of skill and strength and balance and a bit of insanity. Dramatic descriptions of the mundane until it is profound. They have been coming here for years.

We sleep among them. Its a jumble of tents covering every square foot of space in dirt field on the corner of town. The tents color the countryside, the laundry of a family of three thousand or more blowing in the breeze. In the afternoon sun, the inhabitants cling to the shadows like swallows roosting under the awning. Brothers and sisters and cousins lie motionless on dirt, grass, concrete, anywhere there is a shadow. The afternoon stillness unleashes into a frenzy of activity when the sun finally gives up. The frenetic activity lasts until dawn.

And it is a reunion of sorts for Annette and I as well. Our new friends and ambassadors of Catalunya, Quim and Sonia meet us for a final weekend hurrah before students arrive on Monday and they must teach. Quim is our eternal and gracious friend, host and teacher. (Although he credits this blog with teaching him some new English phrases like “run into” and “bump into). Over the course of the weekend, they introduce us to several new friends as well. Luciano and Ruggero, our fellow couch surfers from Quim's place in Roses, make it for a night that becomes two before hitching a ride south for a final week of Ruggero's holiday from life in Lima. And then the three girls from Barcelona who first described this hippy festival in Tarrega when we were couchsurfing in Croatia almost a moon ago. Nuria with her humble and constant smile and sparkling spirit. Raquel with her r's that cut, snap and roll like razors, bacon and barking canines. And Anna with her sweetness. After hosting us for the better part of a great week in Barcelona, all three turned up this weekend for the festivities, puzzled by my “this is awesome” text, wondering if awesome is something like awful, Same family, different mother. And that was how our reunion felt. It was like meeting old friends, family from different motherlands, all united under the Tarrega sun to celebrate in the stoney streets.

Today the festival winds to a close. The campers return to the comforts of their homes. We travel on with our tent to Basque Country tomorrow, San Sebastian, Bilbao, and the Atlantic Ocean for the first time since we left it on the other side.

Photos coming soon!....