The train networks in Spain and Portugal are improving, but there still isn’t very good connections between the countries. In order to travel from the Portuguese Algarve region back to Spain, it would be easier to travel by bus. We don’t like long travel days so we decided to break up our trip from Portimao to Cordoba by stopping for a couple of nights in the Spanish town of Huelva. The city of 150k is not really on the tourist track, but it is famous for a 19th century mining dock and is also the place where Christopher Columbus stayed to prep for his first trip to the Americas. It happened to be Columbus Day this weekend so we thought we might be able to see some sort of a celebration. We were wrong. Columbus Day is only really recognized in the Americas. I suppose that is fine because we don’t really want to celebrate the guy that much that really kicked off World Imperialism and the spread of slavery. But we like celebrations, so we were excited that we were going to experience a different party. We were in Huelva for the Feria del Caballo or “Horse Fair“.
So we arrived on Friday night and crowds of people were everywhere in downtown Huelva. Not sure if it is a normal Friday night, but it was really fun. We found a place to have some drinks on one of the main squares and did a lot of people watching. Many people were dressed up in traditional Andalusian finery, or other nice clothes. We saw a lot of guys in suits and a lot of women in Flamenco dresses. They had their hair tied up in a bun with flowers in it and were wearing super fancy long dresses with the ruffles on the bottom like we have seen flamenco dancers wear. We realized that this is part of the Feria Del Caballo. They were heading to the fair grounds for the big horse party. That was definitely going to be on our agenda for Saturday.
I didn’t get great sleep on Friday night because the Seattle Mariners baseball playoff game went 15 innings. It started at 2am and didn’t finish until 7am. I tried to sleep, but I keep waking up, checking the score, and I eventually couldn’t go back to sleep because of the extra innings tension. But after the big WIN!!!!, we got up to check out the town and eventually head to the Fair Grounds. We just had to follow the suits and Flamenco dresses until we found the horses. The fancy outfits were insane. I really felt out of place wearing shorts and my Mariners T-Shirt. We were definitely seeing another world.
There was a horse arena where the teams took turns showing off their carriages. Some had just two horses and some up to 6 horses. The driver was in charge but usually had 2-6 other people dressed to the nines in or on top of the carriage. They did laps and figure 8’s around the arena and were apparently judged by their turns, stops, and changes in gait. I don’t really know because there wasn’t a scoreboard…. it seemed like it was mostly just for show. We made our way through many other horses to get up to the fence of the arena so we could watch a few rounds.
The excitement of watching horses walk around in circles quickly wore off so we wandered about to see what else was going on. Besides the multiple carriage setups, there were also a lot of solo riders around. The men were always in suits with the flat brimmed hats, the women were usually in riding outfits and often were riding side saddle. Those in the flamenco dresses were walking around or in the carriages. The sexist roles bothered us as Americans, but I guess we need to accept the old traditions and a show like this. We seemed to be in the middle of everything as there wasn’t really a place for us “observers”. There were also about 50 fancy tents set up for each of the horse associations that were involved. It is hard to call them tents because they were decorated with fancy mirrors and paintings on the wall. Each of them had an extensive bar in the back and everyone at the tables were having fun socializing and drinking. We kind of wanted to join in but it looked like private parties and were certainly weren’t dressed up enough to look like we belonged. I bet they have never seen a Seattle Mariners T-shirt.
This day is going to be one of the highlights of our trip! We love to be surprised by festivals that are something we have never experienced before. We don’t really understand everything we saw but that is just fine. We had fun just the same. Next stop – Cordoba!!!!