El Día de Todos los Santos*

Around this time of year the chestnut vendors will have been on the streets of the pueblos blancos for a couple of days. The burnt ochre smell of roasting castañas will have been winding its way down the main thoroughfare of Coín or either of the two Alhauríns. It's one of the things I do miss, that smell. Today is a holiday over there: All Saints Day is when people visit the graves of loved ones. Old ladies take a bucket and cloth to clean the headstone or the little niche where the ashes are kept. Toddlers to tweens put on their best clothes and behaviour to pass on their news to late grandparents, great or otherwise. Teenagers look sullen and bored, though secretly they feel the import of the day. But everyone goes, even if it's only for twenty minutes and then off for a family meal at a Venta on the way home. If the weather is good - and three years in four it is – people will sit outside in the crisp sunshine and tell stories about the departed, long after the last dessert dish of “Flang” has been cleared away.

But yes, the night before, the 31st, has long been colonised by Hollywood, Netflix and The Cartoon Network dubbed into Castellano. In the campo, parents drive their kids, dressed as Sponge-Bob Squarepants or Count Duckula, around the urbanizaciones and country villas and I think that’s a pity.

November 1st though, it’s a day for families, those present and those who’ve passed over to the other side. A day for incense, candles and Catholicism. I’m not religious at all, but if I were, I’d want some pomp and circumstance, mystery and ceremony. I always felt foreign on this day of all days. Foreign, but somehow at home.

[*All Saints Day]