¡Viva Hogueras!

Parades, concerts, parties, oh my.
The past week has been pretty chaotic around here. There have been parades everynight, usually carrying on for a few hours, right down my street.
This parade featured dancers and performers from every hispanic country, South America and Central America. They all had on traditional outfits and performed old tribal dances.
The streets were all decorated with lights and tents and fireworks were going off all the time in all directions.
We met up with all my friends from my program and watched the end of the parade before heading down to the beach.

Down on the beach everyone had brought bevs and started bonfires and was basically just hanging out. There literally were more people on the beach during the Hogueras nights then there are on a sunny weekend afternoon here. It was insane.
This night was called the night of magic. The ritual is that you take a piece of paper and write down all the bad things you have done within the last year. Then you write down all the things you want to accomplish within the next year. After that you throw the piece of paper in a bonfire and go down to the sea and jump over seven waves. Supposedly, then the following year all your dreams will come true and you will become a better person. Of course we all gave it a shot- we figured it couldn't hurt!
During Hogueras all the spanish people go all out for the five days of the festival. I don't know when they have time to sleep. They literally stay out all night drinking and dancing and shooting fireworks. Spain is obsessed with fire, and Hogueras is actually a fire festival. The last night they burn all the floats in the streets of downtown. There are huge giant floats in the middle of apartment buildings, with flames shooting out of them. The fire department is all around keeping it under control and eventually putting them out, and usually spraying the whole crowd with the hose in the process.
All the kids wear their swim suits and scream "A-gua!" until they are drenched. The floats are so colorful and so intricate that it is kind of sad to see them burn, but so cool at the same time. Something like that would never fly in the US, Bromley said it was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Which if one of the buildings caught on fire, it would probably be the end of Hogueras. My internet went out and was out all the next day, and we think it's because the cable got burned in one of the fires. One of the floats was right on the corner of my apartment- and the workers were there all the next day repairing, then the internet reappeared. No pasa nada.