Fire in the Streets
If you find yourself in a narrow street in Barcelona and hear explosions followed by cheers, you may wish to run away but others will run toward the melee. Catalonia has long been a mixing pot of cultures and traditions. The festival of Sant Antoni - complete with bonfires, fireworks, food and festivities - was imported from nearby Mallorca. But the Correfoc, they say, was invented here.
These photos were taken over the course of one weekend interspersed with occasional socialising (I'll never be a true photographer).
I saw different neighbourhoods of Barcelona erupt in celebrations of all kinds - but predictably - I was most keen to shoot the fire-runs.
My first night was relatively unfruitful. The maps of the proposed route were confusing, the performance immediately behind schedule, the experience in itself was very overwhelming.
A ten-year-old with a firework and a protective visor has little inhibition to stop them charging straight into the crowd. The crowd disperses rapidly in all directions and I needed to navigate both problems.
On this occasion too, I was with friends and splitting my attention, photos took a bit of a backseat. This is my favourite from the night.
The second night, I went out alone and put in the time. Barcelona's appropriately-named Sant Antoni neighbourhood hosted an event that felt more villagey in comparison.
The evening started with a parade of drummers! I ran up and down that walk so many times. Drummers don't often make for great photos sadly, but they're a well-trodden path for me.
After that the community descended and we had some Catalan poetry and the drummers & devils celebrated their newcomers giving them t-shirts and inducting them to be devils of Sant Antoni. When the correfoc began, it was welcoming, far more physically-open even than the streets of Gràcia. The people there knew the score and had turned out in hats, scarves, snoods, covering everything they could. When the carretilles came out (the sparklers you hold over your head that project an umbrella of sparks outwards) the experienced folks danced with the devils and crouched down as they dared to bring the sparks lower and lower.
This time all the "runners" were a little older so I felt a bit more shared trust. When they played with the crowd, it was playful and a bit more consensual. It was easy to be part of the event, part of the community. You could see the joy in the performers faces. It's presumably not every night you get to party like this.
That said, the event wasn't toothless. There were plenty of sparks driven into the crowd and many a bystander strongly-encouraged to move their feet and dance to the beat of the drums, fireworks have their uses.
I went home for the night singed and sated. Considering a cultural exchange.
Never quite sure what to focus on.