Last night was the first day of the Town Festival for Oñati. It is a pretty wild affair and goes on until Monday, but then Tuesday everything is closed so people can recover from five days of partying. I am not sure what it celebrates, I will have to ask somebody that. But it is quite a big deal, it really seemed like every citizen was out there. In some ways it was reminiscent of a four of July Parade in the US, but late at night with a lot more drinking and mixing of age groups. People come from other towns, everyone goes out to the plaza, to the bars and carouse and socialize in the street. The few pictures I have are from when a rock band that sings in Basque and Spanish are playing and the "tamborada" which is basically a parade that starts at 11pm.

The unique part is the way people are dressed up, one part of the procession is chefs (presumably a nod to the famous culinary traditions of Basques), while another part is made of people dressed as blacksmiths, (which is because of the long tradition of metal forging, and mining etc in the area) others in traditional Basque peasant clothes. For a small town this is quit a party, all of the bars are packed with people, young and old until at least 4:30 (which is when I went home). People seemed to be pretty voracious drinkers, too (I couldn’t keep up). It was really a lively scene on the street, roving packs of young people go from bar to bar to bar, I think I was 7 or 8 myself. Everywhere was full of people and lots of kid playing and dancing in the plaza to the band (especially early). Will have some more posts for the next few nights.