Burgos Fiestas #1: Street performers

French performers ride an ostrich and a large ball down the street at the Burgos Festivals.

All last week, the city of Burgos was in “festival mode.”  You see, last week was the famous “San Pedro y San Pablo” week in Burgos, the week in which the entire city is turned upside down by non-stop partying.  I spent the week taking pictures of the festivities and have decided to create a mini-series here on the blog to document all that happened.  This is the first installment of said mini-series with much more to come over the upcoming days. 

In this installment of the mini-series, I’d like to talk about something of utmost importance to the festivals: street performers.  It seemed to me that no matter where I went in the city last week, I somehow came in contact with a street performer ”out and about.”  Most of these performers wandered aimlessly throughout the city; however, some were assigned to particular streets.  In any event, the thing that surprised me most about these performers was the quality of their performances; in fact, it was obvious that these people were highly trained and had years of practice and thus their shows were nothing short of amazing — this wasn’t a homeless guy strumming a banjo on the street to earn a dime. 

A Spaniard puts on an elaborate puppet show on a major pedestrian street in Burgos.

Jugglers, magicians, puppeteers, acrobats: the city of Burgos had a little bit of everything on its streets last week.  It was interesting to me to see the role these people played in the celebration; in fact, I feel as though the street performers were somewhat like the “glue” that held the festival together — they kept the atmosphere on the street light and cheery and made the partygoers happy.  In addition to that, the shows on the street added a very unique cultural element to the festivities; after all, many of the performers came from other countries and this gave the festivities a sort of “international flair.”  To put it in a nutshell, street performances are an indispensable part of the Burgos San Pedro y San Pablo festivals. 

To read about other aspects of the Burgos Fiestas, check out my Burgos Fiestas 2009 page.  The page will be updated throughout the upcoming weeks as I add more content to the mini-series.  You also may be interested in checking out my Fiesta Photos on Picasa. 

Hasta luego,
–Chris
http://abroadinspain.com