Alicante was founded by Phoenician explorers, hundreds of years before the Greeks became an important civilization. The locals were just burly barbarians at the time. The town became a trading outpost for precious metals, spices and unique goods from Spain, including slaves. Phoenicia is what we now call Lebanon. These guys were the leading explorers of the time. A trip from Lebanon to Spain should have been the equivalent of going to the moon nowadays.
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The statue below is 2400 years old. This lady was part of the Phoenician aristocracy, the ancient 1%. Alicante changed owners and name multiple times over the centuries. Out of this long history came some of the most unique traditions in the continent.
One of Alicante's coolest celebrations is the Saint John's Bonfires festival. The bonfires are set up
on the summer solstice, the longest day, shortest night of the year, June 21th. Large, painted paper mache and wood structures are built in the middle of street intersections and parks. These bonfire are large, forty feet tall or higher, made out of a collection of statues themed around humorous social commentary. If we had this tradition in the US, our bonfire figurines would feature Obama and Romney debating in some type of cartoonish, funny setting. Bodybuilders would try to lift the debt ceiling. Light satirical commentary on today's news. Each neighborhood sets up their own bonfire, a large size one with adult themes and a small one for children.
You can imagine the whole city goes into full time party time for four days. If you actually have something important to do, like giving birth to a baby, those four days are a nightmare. You only have partial public services. Driving in the city is all but impossible and most people, including doctors are off. The hospitals are left with a small crew of overwhelmed and pissed off junior doctors that are feeling sorry for themselves. But I digress.
On the night of Saint John, June 24th, all these Bonfires are burned, ignited by a massive amount of fireworks and accelerant. So cool. The local band is playing and the firefighters hose down the area around the bonfire, including the people. Great fun.
I have always thought that the reason there are no highway shootings in Spain is that all these festivals offer an incredibly powerful emotional release. As the bonfires burn, you enter a surreal world and all your problems seem to disappear, dissolved in this ocean of collective happiness, music, fireworks, good friends and excitement. The social issues, as displayed in the bonfire, burn away at the event in a metaphorical way. All this contributes to a more balanced collective psyche. There is a true sense of community that builds as neighbors team up for fund raising events throughout the year to finance their bonfire.
Saint John marked the beginning of summer vacation for my brother and I. We finished school in mid June and the bonfire set up activities would start around the 19th. During those festival days, kids would buy all types of fireworks and go around town finding things to blow up. Some of the firecrackers we used were large and they are probably illegal by now. It is a different world.
We had a lot of fun. We would explode firecrackers inside empty tomato cans to enhance the explosion. We could buy some pretty large size firecrackers and find open drain pipes to explode them in. You could always find an empty park or an out of the way area where we could do our thing with no adult interference. We used the gunpowder from duds to experiment with. We made our own bonfires with construction paper and used gunpowder and gasoline to set them on fire.
That summer after Saint John's, my brother decided to make his own gunpowder. Not a complicated formula and the local hardware store had all the ingredients. He was around fourteen at the time, so I was eight years old. We started our experiments by changing the proportions of the three ingredients to see how the mix would have different ignition speed and power. Optimization!. We filled up small wooden tubes with gunpowder and light up one end. Instant rocket. Instant blow torch if you didn't let go of it. Kids don't try this at home!.
In our progression from open ended devices to explosive devices, my brother had the bright idea to use a lead water pipe we found at a construction site. Lead is easy to work with. We cut off an eight inch section, we bent one end closed, filled the pipe with tightly packed gunpowder, added a wick from a commercial firecracker and sealed that end with freshly chewed chewing gum. Twenty four hours later, we had what we thought would be the biggest firecracker ever. In reality we had a fully functional pipe bomb.
My brother had enough common sense to light up the thing outside our house, at a time that there was no one around. He dropped the pipe bomb on the street and we took cover behind the corner of the house. The explosion was about as loud as a very large firecracker, but it had a more serious sounding bang. Being behind the corner provided enough cover from the lead shrapnel that flew out of this thing. God bless 90 degree angles. We were both unharmed but shocked by the explosion. There was lead shrapnel on the wall. That second we both realized that if we hadn't taken cover we could have been killed. We ran back into the house before the neighbors started to poke their heads out the window to see what that bang was about. We had interrupted some prime siesta time on a hot summer day.
There was hell to pay for this. My parents pieced it all together and grounded us for a long time. My brother, being older, got the brunt of it. That day we realized we had crossed an invisible line, our knowledge got ahead of our common sense.
We somehow matured quite a bit as a result of this experience. Growing up in the sixties and seventies, we didn't have access to easy entertainment as we have today. That gave my generation a more active mindset, versus being a passive consumer of electronic entertainment. The benefits of an active mindset are well worth the risks, even though my parents did not think so at the time...
I just hope that this new world of electronics keeps moving further and morphs into environments where children can be mentally active and they can explore and experiment like my brother and I did, but in a safer way and at a larger scale. What a cool thing that would be, going back by going forward.
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