Aste Nagusia Bilbao

Festival Location: Bilbao, Spain

Festival Type(s): Traditional Music Festivals, Latin Dance Festivals | Salsa Festivals, Parties

Bilbao's Big Week

By: © Anil Shamdasani 2009

If you're planning to visit Bilbao for a quiet break – a visit to the Guggenheim and a chance to catch up on your reading – it's probably best to avoid the third week in August. That's when the summer-long season of fiestas held in each town in the Basque Country lands in the region's biggest city, and it certainly lives up to it's name Aste Nagusia, or 'Big Week'.

For ten days the city centre is full to bursting with people, young and old, enjoying a mix of traditional Basque music, dance and sports (anyone for a spot of stone-lifting or log-chopping?) and more modern spectacles, fuelled by regular helpings of food and wine from the many txosnas (large tents) that line the main streets. The sound of the accordion fills the air while groups of dancers in traditional white costumes with red sashes, berets and espadrilles jump and kick in unison. And every now and again you will catch a glimpse of the 'big heads', stilt-walkers dressed up in traditional outfits with huge heads, or Gargantua, a fat man who eats children and then 'passes' them through a flap in his trousers.

If you're feeling peckish, you could head over to one of the cooking competitions where local chefs compete to produce the best bacalao al pil-pil (cod in a garlic sauce) or merluza en salsa verde (hake in green sauce). And if you are feeling particularly adventurous you could try your hand at bull fighting, thankfully you'll only find yourself up against calves with their horns padded and ideally with no blood shed by either party.

Once the sun has set, huge crowds gather for the daily firework displays as pyrotechnic teams from the surrounding villages compete for the 'best display' award. And then the party begins. The bar staff in the txosnas serve up beer, wine and kalimotxo (red wine and Coke – surprisingly tasty, but I suspect not quite so good for your stomach) to the thirsty punters, each txosna trying to out-do it's neighbours with the volume of it's music, whether it's traditional Basque music, ska, heavy metal or a Spanish ballad.

A word of warning: don't wear any clothes that you actually care about. Drinks come in large, flimsy plastic cups shared among groups and the chances of you surviving the night without large red stains down your top are slim, at best. Particularly if someone in your group decides it's funny to burn a hole in the bottom of the cup with his cigarette before passing it on to you to drink from.

The singing, dancing and drinking carries on until the not-so-early hours of the morning, when the street cleaners take on the unenviable task of clearing up before the festivities start all over again the following day. The week ends with the burning of Marijaia, a rosy-cheeked mascot of the fiesta, outside the Arriaga theatre.

One aspect of Aste Nagusia that stood out for me was the lack of a conspicuous police presence as compared to, say, the Notting Hill Carnival where it can feel like there are as many police as carnival-goers. There is a real family atmosphere during both the day and night - this is Spain, after all (although many of the txosnas are decorated with posters disputing that). And while Aste Nagusia might not be as well known as the Tomatina or San Fermin festivals, the opportunity of joining in with a whole city at play for a week is one not to pass up on.

by Anil Shamdasani