Early in February, Bocairent bursts at the seams in honour of its patron saint, San Blas (Sant Blai). For six vivid days, fireworks crackle, pasodobles and comparsa music swell, parades roll, processions wind, and gunpowder booms through the streets. Everyone with a tie to Bocairent comes home—students, emigrants, cousins, the old guilds and new cofradías—crowding balconies, drumming in doorways, marching beside standards stitched by their mothers. At the castle, captains parley and boast before the mock assault, the old rivalry reborn in pageantry. By night, lanterns and drums fold the town into a pulsing heart; by day, Sant Blai crosses streets. Half theatre, half memory—history retold on foot to the rhythm of trumpets and gunfire—leaving your ears ringing.
