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 The
fiestas of San Isidro, Saint Isidore, one of Madrid's
patron saints, take place in May. As well as the most important
bullfighting festival in the world, the celebrations include
fairs, concerts, dances and the romeria, a kind of
pilgrimage, to the ermita de San Isidro, where,
more out of tradition than belief, the faithful take the supposedly
miraculous water.
May is a festive month in Madrid. As everywhere, May 1st
is, of course, Labour Day, then on May 2nd, Dos
de Mayo*, Madrid celebrates the insurrection which
built up into the Spanish War of Independence, which others
call the Peninsular War. And these festivities are barely
over by the 15th of May, the day of Saint Isidore, one of
Madrid's patron saints. The fiestas of San
Isidro are genuinely popular events, while the bullfighting
festival, the most important in Spain, runs for nearly
a whole month.
During the week or ten days either side of the saint's day,
concerts are held in the Plaza Mayor,
the Vistillas park near the palace becomes a verbena,
an open-air dance-hall, and many Madrid castizos, true-blue
natives, will dress up in one of their local costumes. There
are two kinds of costume: the majos and majas,
and the chulos and chulapas. The former is the
popular dress as recorded by Goya, the men looking rather
bandolero-like, the women sporting high combs and lace
shawls. Chulos and chulapas are even more engrained
in the spirit of Madrid, to the extent that chulo,
meaning cocky or insolent, is almost synonymous with the city.
This costume is rather like that of London's pearly kings
and queens and probably dates from around the same time -
white neckerchiefs, black-and-white check jackets, waistcoats
and caps for the men and clinging, frilly dresses and headscarves
for the women. Chulos and chulapas dance to
the chotis,
a slow, polka-like air, preferably sounded on a barrel
piano. The lady dances in courtly fashion around the man,
who rotates arrogantly on the spot, only shuffling his feet
to face his partner (almost a chulo statement). It
is very theatrical and a great pleasure to watch.
* The very observant will note
that this link brings up Goya's "The 3rd of May, 1808,
in Madrid," i.e., the following day, when the French
took reprisals. The indignation caused by this was the real
spark for the ensuing revolt.
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