Thousands pack Murcia for the Bando de la Huerta

Grown adults fought shamelessly for a fat red pepper or a handful of broad beans

With Semana Santa, austerity and lent over and done, the City of Murcia launches straight into the Fiestas de Primavera, the spring fiestas celebrating the bounty and traditions of the fruit and vegetable orchards which surrounded the city and gave Murcia a reputation for being the “vegetable garden of Spain”.

On the first Tuesday following Easter Sunday Murcia celebrates the “Bando de la Huerta”, thousands of Murcianos donning traditional “huertano” costume and packing the outdoor tapas gardens set up for the duration of the fiestas in the plazas and gardens of the city, enjoying the best of Murcian tapas, locally produced beer and wine, and the company of friends and family.

In the early evening the grand parade of the Bando de la Huerta takes place, and this year was bigger than on previous occasions, the main floats distributing produce and gifts preceded by hundreds of costumed folk dancers, traditional artisans on bicycles, the Queens of the Huerta and their attendants, together with horses and carriages and floats showing facets of Murcian traditional life.

The procession opened with horseman carrying the standards of Spain, the region, the city of Murcia and the Peñas federation, followed by traditional “gigantes y cabezudos” tall papier màché figures which were always a feature of Murcian fiesta parades, accompanied by some peculiar looking silk worms and cauliflowers, representing the importance of the silk industry in Murcia and its agricultural importance. Those who are interested in seeing how silk worms were fed can do so in the reproduction of a typical Murcian barraca, or huerta home, which is just inside the entrance to the gardens of Malecon on the riverbank, complete with mini vegetable patch and and an impressive collection of original agricultural memorabilia.

These were followed milkmen on bicycles, and a whole host of traders who used to traverse the orchards plying their wares. Carpenters, woodworkers, esparto grass weavers and even bakers, the bicycles gradually replaced by the early motoguzzis lovingly restored by enthusiasts which also featured in the parade, along with a large number of horse and carriages.

Next came the floats showing how grapes were trodden, cereal crops threshed, water raised using man powered waterwheels, bread baked in traditional bread ovens, animals farmed for their meat and eggs, and even herbs dstilled, the air filled with the sharp sweetness of mint as a distillation unit puffed past on a tractor pulled float, before the eagerly awaited “merienda”.

The crowd surged forward, disintegrating into a disorderly rabble who thrust their children forward to catch the sweets, boiled eggs, sausages, gifts and vegetables which rained down from the floats of the peñas, filling hats, bags and their skirts with anything that flew through the air, grown adults competing shamelessly to grab a handful of broad beans or a fat Murcian morcilla.

A plump red pepper, stick of celery or pack of broccoli were received with equal enthusiasm to a football or a free hat, grandparents sensibly accumulating enough for a good Murcian salad or pesto, fathers enjoying a lump of bread and sausage with a glass of beer and their offspring digging with glee through bags of sweets and useless trinkets, the ground awash with spent wrappers, squashed lemons and packaging.

Then it was off to the tapas gardens for the best of Murcian tapas, made by the peñas themselves and served amongst the trees of the botanical gardens: slowly simmered michirones, plump broad beans mopped up with wood-oven baked bread, the sweetness of zarangolla, an egg dish resembling scrambled egg, but mixed with slowly fried vegetables, meatballs in a rich chicken stock, sausages and thick potato wedges with potent garlic mayonnaise. Then washed down by coffee spiked with anis and deep fried lemon leaves dusted with cinnamon and sugar, paparajotes, accompanied by folk dancers and families as dusk slowly fell across the exhausted revellers, many of whom had been in the city enjoying themselves all day.

And there’s plenty more to come….10,000 Murcian meat pies going free on Wednesday, the parade of Murcia en la Primavera and the arrival of the sardine on Thursday, then on Saturday night the burial of the sardine, a night when fantastical floats accompanied by flame wielding sardineros sow their very own brand of Murcian madness in the streets of the city….Murcia in the Spring.