Día de Andalucía – the most important Fiesta in Andalusia

On 28th. of February we celebrate the most important Fiesta in Andalusia, the Día de Andalucía. It’s the day when, back in 1980, Andalusia voted for the statute to be an autonomous community. If you want to find out more about history and politics you can do so here.

What we want to tell you is how Andalusians celebrate this very special day.

How long a Fiesta in Andalusia can last

The early bird gets the worm – the early Andalusian has more time to celebrate 🙂

In general the Fiesta already starts the Friday before the actual Día de Andalucía. At least in schools and Kindergartens, where the pupils enjoy a typical Andalusian breakfast together – the tostada! A slice of toasted bread spread with tomato, olive oil and a bit of salt.

Honestly speaking sometimes the celebrations already even starts on that very Thursday. Than People are leaving for a short holiday, but there is no cultural reason for this – they just use the excuse 🙂

How do you actually spend the most important Fiesta in Andalusia

On the actual Día de Andalucía you have two options:

1. Meet up at home with all your family and enjoy a really good lunch together. You will probably end up drinking quite a lot as well. Which means you then are obliged to stay together all night to have the remains of lunch for dinner. Only to soak up the alcohol you had all afternoon. By the end of the night your eardrums will be up the spout. Andalusian family reunions are far from being calm and relaxing. To put it in the words of a facial cream wrapping, it would be something like refreshing and invigorating.
2. You can also go out to some local place, in general the market square of your village. There everybody who doesn’t meet up at home with his family, will come together. Most likely bringing all the rest of his family. In Mojácar the town hall provides a giant Paella. You can get yourself some drinks in the bars around the marketplace. The Paella is for free, so you can probably imagine that when lunch starts at 14:00h the queue is quite impressive. It will be for about two hours that you sit and stand together chatting, gossiping, having a beer or two and enjoying the Paella. And then you suddenly realize that you do need to spend a penny. You end up having some more beer accompanied by lovely, fresh Tapas in a nice bar. And here you will spend the rest of your Día de Andalucía.

And this is how it slowly but surely ends – the most important Fiesta in Andalusia.

Now, what’s the moral of this story?

What we are trying to say is … whatever holiday we celebrate – it’s a lot about eating and drinking, meeting people, enjoying family and friends, taking time for each other. And because people love to spend their leisure time like this, the next Día de Fiesta is just around the corner … on Thursday after the Día de Andalucía we celebrate the Día de la Vieja, a day where the young ones hit dolls with stones – and the dolls represent their parents or grandparents … very strange tradition, right?

So if you know consider joining us for the next Fiesta in Andalusia check out what room you would like to stay in …