{"id":4935,"date":"2019-05-20T12:37:39","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T19:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/?p=4935"},"modified":"2019-05-22T02:07:16","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T09:07:16","slug":"ronda-romantica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/ronda-romantica\/","title":{"rendered":"Ronda \u2013 Romantica"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We got here\nin time for the annual festivities this year and as Spanish cultural parties\ngo, it was colorful, which I think was how I described the last party in Jerez\na week ago.  Seems to be a weekly thing\nover here, colorful parties, parades, song and dance, food and drink, and of\ncourse horses everywhere.  I was tempted\nto make this post a pirate theme, but I did that earlier with the lame parrot\nthing and while the dress looks sort of \u2018pirate-ish\u2019, they are actually bandits.  Could be called land-pirates I suppose.  Is that a thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And that is what the Romantica festival is really about.  Bandoleros.  Romantic ones.  Kinda like Robin Hood.  The bandoleros had been hiding out in the Rondan mountains for years, stealing from the rich, politely, helping the poor people, and defending the area from Napoleon\u2019s armies.  Stories were told, the tales got bigger, and everyone became romantic, in a story-telling kind of way.  The Ronda fair actually dates back to the early 1500\u2019s but by the time the French started invading, it had become a sort of gathering spot for European and North American travelers hoping to meet the famous bandits.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Every year,\nthe area celebrates all of this history by dressing up in 19th<\/sup>\ncentury garb, French and bandolero style and turning Ronda back into an 1800\u2019s\ntown.  There are small reenactments of\nsome of the French battles, local merchants from the surrounding towns selling\nstuff off of donkey carts, and food and drink prepared and served the way it\nwas 200 years ago.  There are\nperformances put on by traditional Andalusian singers and musicians, story telling\u2019s\nof some of the more famous banditos, and  equestrian events celebrating the Andalusian\nhorses.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was a\nlittle disappointed at first, to tell the truth.  Given that we mentioned the festival and\nposted some links to the promo videos of the Romantica last year, I was\nexpecting a full-blown battle reenactment on the plains below the city.  You know, thousands of men, horses, canon, death\nand destruction everywhere.  What\nfun!  At least that was what I was thinking\nafter watching the video.  It was made up\nfor though with the Friday night parade. \nIn Canada, the parade clowns often hand out chocolate silver dollars to\nthe kids; here the merchants pass out shots of liqueur\u2026to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The\ntakeaways from this for us are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re never very far from a festival in Spain so bring some party clothes,\npreferably 2 or 3 hundred year\u2019s old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always check out the parade.  You never know what they are giving out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t believe the media.  Even the\nDonald doesn\u2019t trust them.  He should\nknow, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no pirates here. \nArrrrrgh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We got here in time for the annual festivities this year and as Spanish cultural parties go, it was colorful, which I think was how I described the last party in Jerez a week ago.  Seems to be a weekly thing over here, colorful parties, parades, song and dance, food and drink, and of course horses everywhere.  I was tempted to make this post a pirate theme, but I did that earlier with the lame parrot thing and while the dress looks sort of \u2018pirate-ish\u2019, they are actually bandits.  Could be called land-pirates I suppose.  Is that a thing? And that is what the Romantica festival is really about.  Bandoleros. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,1],"tags":[16,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4935"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4981,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4935\/revisions\/4981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/travelblog.lewington.ca\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}