Una fiesta grandisima! For a day Ribadavia travelled back to its glorious past as a capital of Ribeiro in the 15th century and welcomed thousands of people, dressed up in medieval clothes, to celebrate in medieval manner together with the king and the queen, the jokers, the dancers, the musicians and the merchants from the fairy-tales! The streets were filled with life, noise, music, people talking, shouting, dancing, eating, drinking, singing…; the same tidy and quiet little streets that I walk upon every day were simply not the same!
Festa da Istoria is a special celebration – not only because it happens once in a year (always in the last weekend of August). It is the only time when the town hosts so many people and you can see it so much filled with life. The program starts from Thursday with warming-up concerts of medieval music and dances, together with a market and some fireworks. In this period it is already not surprising to see little princesses or executors passing by you… But definitely the biggest gathering of people is in Saturday, when the program starts from the early morning and consists of any type of entertainment, including parade, dances, a jewish wedding, real tournament, falcon-training, live chess, archery and more. There are many fiestas of this type around Galicia. But Ribadavia has the oldest tradition of making it, so here is the event with the biggest number of visitors and the best filled program.
And I could proudly say that I wasn’t only an observer J Me, Adam and Santa took part in the medieval dances for which we were practicing few times a week for more than a month. The people that we danced together with were mostly women of course, but on the age between 5 and 60, all of them so sweet! Our beautiful dancing group danced each of the days of the fiesta, got shot for the Galician TV channel and was observed by their majesties the King and the Queen on the main square, later on the stage of the theatre, just like real medieval celebrities J
And being a little fairy-tale, this fiesta also ended with living happily ever after; streets covered with garbage, people getting really drunk. And on the next day the town was so quiet and still as if nothing has ever happened. Only the flags with medieval pictures and arms, hanging from the balconies and the street lamps stayed to remind about the time-machine that we all were in…
