By: Magdalena Mihaylova
The author and some friends at a verbena in the south of Tenerife.
The roar of the crowd sounded like an angry tide. Through the chants, the clapping, and the gasps, we formed a mass of sound, a motor for the eleven teenagers out on the freshly-cut field. Tiny shooters of vodka and gin were passed around secretly amongst the student section, and on the other side of the bleachers, the parents clutched each other with nerves as the ball soared through the air. Little kids ran around the concession stands as students logging volunteer hours yawned and passed out hot dogs. For most of suburban America, this image is a familiar one—the infamous high school football game—and it represents one of our nation’s cornerstones of community and tradition.
When dissecting a culture and its various colors, tradition plays an important role in keeping the collective connected to their central identity and spirit. It not only gives you the pride in saying some act is uniquely yours—only in Murcia do we burn the giant sardine!—but it also pushes the community to gather, share, and celebrate together. In most countries, there are different traditions based on region or city, such as the aforementioned fiestas de primavera in Murcia, versus Los Indianos in La Palma—two separate regions of Spain with their own personal celebrations. In a country as large as the United States, one would imagine a similarly wide, unique scope of festivities, uniting our people in song, dance, and drink. The reality is quite different.
Growing up in the U.S, I was lucky enough to live in a town that organized community events such as summer music concert series, art fairs, and beer festivals. But these events weren’t directly linked to a religious or historical background, and they usually targeted specific age groups (jazz concerts for the middle-aged folk, puppet parades for kids). Nor were they very accessible—reflected in the price of entry tickets and food and drink, or even simply in our urban layout, as there are not many pedestrian-only towns in the U.S. (and of course, many of these “traditions” are directly related to the privilege, social class, and race of the community wherein they take place). Enter people’s obsession with sports teams or high school rivalries.
What are the implications of this? As someone who spent their childhood and adolescence in a small city, leisure time can get quite boring. In Michigan, a common pastime is parking your car in the grocery store parking lot…and that’s basically it. You just sit there in the parking lot. Having community events that bring young people entertainment and connection is crucial for a healthy social life, but these happenings are infrequent and have a reputation for being detached from what young people actually like doing. This pushes the act of socialization into the private sphere—into finished basements and church parking lots (we love our parking lots)—and creates a more individualistic, separated society.
At least for a young person, there is always the “solution” of alcohol-ridden parties, in the sense that they can be established anywhere. But for the older folks of a community, having a way to integrate into their environment is important in remaining connected and visible. Think of the typical “soccer mom”—the white, middle-class moms of 12-year-old kids playing soccer on weekends, who dedicate their whole life and spirit to ensuring the athletic success of their dear Billy or Sam. We like to pick fun at their dramatic involvement in screaming on the sidelines, preparing elaborate snacks, or gossiping about other parents’ kids, but we seldom reflect on why they might act that way, why they might project so much onto such a silly thing. Without falling into generalizations, many of these women live in suburban towns and might not have professional work; they lack a central community space in which to mingle and find identity beyond the family. They find that sense of belonging in organizations that are somehow related to their town—soccer moms within the local league or PTA moms organizing elementary school social programming—but these identifiers are steeped in gender, class, and race implications. Rather than uniting them into the community, they add to the stratifications that divide us.
Living in Spain for the last two years has been a revelation, in the sense of tradition—especially since my home is in the Canary Islands. Here, there is some sort of fiesta every week, if not multiple ones every week. Some are religious romerías, which imply the town following a shrine that is carried from (insert: beach, mountain, cave, etc.) to a church; some are verbenas celebrating a town’s tradition, such as San Diego here in Tenerife, which celebrates when a professor let students skip class back in the mid-1990s. The celebration is: students skip class, and there’s a big party all night long. And in places like La Laguna, where I live, there are fiestas that last a month long, with a concert one day, fireworks on another, and a street procession of a Jesus shrine the next.
And while the fiestas differ in theme or saint or reason for truancy, they all share three simple, key elements that make them inclusive, successful traditions: music for dancing, cheap drinks and food, and involvement from all of the community. People who grow up in Canarias spend their whole lives going to the fiestas around the island, first as little kids with their parents, later as adolescents looking to get wasted, and finally as old couples dancing the night away in a tight embrace. There is no stigma to the fact that people of all ages share the space and dance floor, nor that the kids or elderly people stay up until the early morning. Sometimes, when the tradition is peculiar, people dress up in specific costumes or the town organizes more elaborate decorations, but in general the most important thing is to have good music and everyone together.
As a foreigner, it can be difficult to integrate into a culture, especially into the elements that are so fiercely identified with location—such as traditions that imply a connection to a certain town or island. But what’s beautiful about the fiestas I have observed in Spain is that all anyone really cares about is having a good time—not making a profit, or showing that you’re cultish, or avoiding going somewhere with your parents—and I have been pulled into so many dances, rounds of shots, and abracitos, even despite not being a local. Indeed, tradition is not actually just about what it celebrates, but how it forces us to remember, respect, and rejoice, together.
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