peter
“I’ve always been interested in Spain. I’ve travelled a lot there but it was their culture that got me the most. So much so, that I wrote a book called Spanish Fiestas, which is all about their wild, wonderful and downright weird festivals. They have dozens of them, most of which involved bulls but my personal favourite is the rat throwing festival, still performed today in a town called El Puig. The tradition’s origins are from the celebration of a local saint where people used to leave pottery filled with sweets, bread or grains in front of their doors in honour of their saint. One year, on the saint’s feast day, they were invaded by rats. The broke open all the pots and there were so many of them that the town had to get together to fight them off. They started to chase and kill the poor animals and afterwards, in the ecstasy of their victory, it seemed like a great idea to start throwing the dead animals at each other as a way of celebrating. The rat throwing festival is not even the weirdest one, I can tell you that! Every country has their own traditions and they often make me wonder what sort of traditions are we creating these days, that we will look back in a couple of hundred years, that will seem just as downright weird as this one!”