Well it was a surreal Sunday just gone, as well as it being our English Mothers Day (how I missed the girls, but I did get to have long chats with them all) it was the very well known 'Dia de Sopa', The Day of the Soup, in Monda. Go on, you must have heard of it!!
As you might know, the Spanish love a fiesta and will dance until the early or late hours of the morning. I have heard the music just finishing at 8.30 am on a couple of occasions when opening the shutters to start my day, the last strains of flamenco drifting across the valley from Monda. So glad we don't live in the village, you would need some industrial strength ear plugs to cope with it all!
Anyway we found ourselves, along with our neighbours Richard and Janet (I really must stop calling them Richard and Judy when I've had a glass of wine), struggling through the narrow streets, firstly to find somewhere to park and then just mix with our village neighbours. Families who live in the village had large cauldrons bubbling away in the street outside their front doors, and the men were throwing in the ingredients: bread, eggs, potatoes, peppers, garlic, tomatoes and most probably their family secret ingredient. Everybody was in high spirits and the soup was being ladled into bowls and handed out to people passing by. In the main square the BIG soup is made with a thousand eggs and huge vats of the other ingredients. I will put a link at the bottom which will take you to the actual film that was taken for the Monda website and TV. We did walk past while the filming was being done but i couldn't see us on it. The dancing takes place afterwards with lots of different groups doing their thing, from the tiny tots up to the elders.
We managed to find a bar and a seat and enjoyed a selection of Tapas as all the merriment went on and had a thoroughly enjoyable day.
Guess what? Next Sunday is Paella Fiesta and we will have to do it all again. I don't know where the Spanish get their energy!
Monda website, click on film after entering