Today is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week, a week full of tradition here in Spain. In the village of Juzcar, today the locals (including all the children) will be tramping around the countryside cutting branches from trees such as laurel, pine, oak, chestnut, following the village tradition. Once they have collected all the branches, they return quite merrily and loudly to the village and put what they have collected near the village hall. Later in the week, they will use all these branches to decorate the village, adorning houses, railings, the village hall, the church, etc., it actually looks quite nice. Of course the older participants in today's activity will end up having a piss up.
February 2011 was the best February we have ever had, strange given that we are still feeling the effect of this recession. We were full for both St Valentine's weekend and the for the Andalucia Day which falls on 28 February. Then we had March which was very slow for us, in fact, March 2011 was the slowest March we have ever had, the least bookings and barely anyone for the restaurant. Of course it did not help that were closed for one week due to my birthday celebrations. My sisters came over from New York as well as a couple of friends, one from Florida and the other from Virginia. It was a big birthday for me so a celebration was in order and that included closing the business for a few days.
We all went to Gibraltar one day and really enjoyed ourselves. We all had the typical tourist fare of fish and chips in the main square which was surprisingly quite good and large. We later took a tour in a taxi of the main tourists points which included the Pillars of Hercules, St Michael's cave and the tunnels dug out in the 18 century, all quite interesting. There are some photos available on the Hotel Bandolero Facebook page of this day, if you're interested
And for my birthday, we all headed to Sevilla for two nights of fun and good eats where we were joined by two more friends from Madrid and Sevillano cousin Jesus and his girlfriend Sylvia. All in all, quite a good birthday.
And now we are here at the start of Holy Week and we have a group arriving from Scotland this evening for the annual Scottish Gaelic Language and Song Workshop. In fact, one participant has arrived just now on his own. This will be the third such workshop held here in Juzcar at the hotel and it kicks off in full tomorrow. The group will also spend an evening in Ronda viewing one of the Easter processions and then an evening of flamenco. And on Holy Thursday (21-04-2011), we will be holding a ceidihl (pronounced "kay-lee") which is a Scottish fiesta comprising of music, song, dance, kilts of course and some whisky if you like. There will also be shortbread about and all are welcome; it kicks-off from 8:30 P.M here in Juzcar at the hotel. Check out our webpage with information about the workshop here: http://www.hotelbandolero.com/themes/gaelic.html .
We are going to continue to be busy with a group of American artists arriving in the first weekend of May. This is a new artist and group for us introduced by our other American artist who holds workshops here in the autumn. They will be here for a full 10 nights with a packed agenda including a day trip to La Alhambra in Granada amongst other day trips for painting.
The other news we have which is something we hope will heavily promote the village of Juzcar is a up-coming film release. "How so?" one may ask. Well, it turns out that Sony Pictures is promoting a new Smurf film to be released in August 2011 and their publicity campaign for Spain includes painting a village where Smurfs might live completely the Smurf blue. Yes folks, you got it, Juzcar is that village and Juzcar is going to be painted Smurf blue for the promotion. Blue, that is correct. (FYI, the Smurfs are called "Los Pitufos" in Castilian.) This planned event was announced about 10 days ago at a village residents meeting with the Juzcar mayor and apparently all the village residents have given their approvals to have their houses painted blue for this publicity event which will be a big press event which will include Smurfs as well in mid-June 2011. Sony Pictures will also donate and plant one tree for every resident in the village with their names on the trees ( as this is an environmentally friendly promotional event in keeping with how the Smurfs live in their enchanted forest!! ). The village will remain blue until end of summer when it will be painted again to the original white. All in all, could be quite interesting, lots of visitors to see the blue village, a unique things for this year only.
For those of you who know nothing about Smurfs, check them out in YouTube and on Wikipedia where there is a history of the story of the Smurfs, their comic strip and cartoons.
Until next time, todavia el Bandolero le espera en el parte mas verde de Andalucia.
