After learning that Les Fogueres de Sant Joan has been suspended for the year 2020, I have decided not to leave without comment that they deserve the bright and bright Fogueres de Sant Joan that are traditionally held in my beloved Xàbia.
The arrival of summer is celebrated in many places in Spain with the Bonfires of San Juan, although those on the Mediterranean coast are especially famous. It is a festival of very ancient origin in which magical rituals are intertwined with fire, gunpowder, water and music. All this to welcome the summer. The rite of lighting a bonfire, on the one hand, to give more strength to the sun, since from that date the days become shorter and, therefore, the sun weakens. On the other hand, it had a purifying function for the people who contemplated it.
Les Fogueres de Xàbia in honor of San Juan are an explosion show, where joy and friendship merge into an explosion of color, light, celebration, memories, and feelings, which dignify the life of Xàbia and the xabieros.
The spell of fire with the traditional spirit of San Juan, make the town of Xàbia a festival that envelop it and sweeten the aroma of "Festive Love".
The spiritual magic of the sanjuanero spell, aims to achieve purification at the stake of the mysteries and secrets of evil. Xàbia, from its demonstrated and confirmed intrinsic goodness, seeks to transform that supposedly evil spirit, into a paradise of good and happiness.
The fire in the form of bright and living light, ascends and rises to heaven as if it wanted to receive a divine blessing, so that it protects and helps the people in their tribulations and difficulties and, so that all this, becomes a piélago of love, peace, friendship and understanding, and thus, to be able to delve into what is, has been and will be: a people of solidarity, friend of the party, work, music and superlative solidarity.
The charm of Les Fogueres, as of the other festive events in Xàbia, are the culmination that make Xàbia a town admired and loved by all those who are lucky enough to have been born and live in it, or to visit it, or know it. For this reason, Les Fogueres de Sant Joan are a faithful reflection of life itself and of a friendly, hard-working, caring, generous and fun people.
As for Xàbia:
God endowed her with goodness
of simplicity and greatness
of infinite qualities
reflecting with nobility.
Of exemplary trajectory
supportive, kind, tolerant,
you were born to make you dream
and created to love you.
Xàbia is "ground gold"
Praising her allows me,
but in my verses I don't forget
Xàbia praise without limit.
It is that in Xàbia it is enlarged
the life that I adore so much
because with humility he offers us
your great love as a treasure,
since it is what it seems
Xàbia: "ground gold".
And so…
Fogueres de Sant Joan
Les Fogueres come and go.
This year 2020, due to the unfortunate coronavirus pandemic, Xàbia has been forced, due to health prevention, to suspend, not only, the celebration of Les Fogueres de Sant Joan in June (the same as it was done with those of the Nazarene in May, the Moors and Christians for July and the Festes de la Mare de Dèu in Customs for September), but also for the month of October to which they had been postponed, since, unfortunately, the pandemic, although it has softened the virus remains latent, invisible and lurking in any corner of Spain.
The Hon. Javea Town Hall and the Fogueres Commission Board, from responsibility, with lucidity, with a sensible, far-sighted and intelligent criterion, have preferred to cancel Les Fogueres this year, but they have also confirmed their faith and their Sanjuanero spirit with an eye toward 2021, pledging and promising Fogueres doubly reinforced with illusions, joys, fun and festive luminosity, and thus demonstrate that the love for this beloved and deeply rooted party in Xàbia lives on in the hearts of the xabieros.
Because Xàbia has the soul of Fiesta, of light, of love, of friendship, of concord, of solidarity, of industry and of an overwhelming attraction that conquers both locals and strangers.
Les Fogueres de 2021 will be an explosion of luminosity, color and strengthening of brotherhood and empathy that characterize this charming Mediterranean Villa, which I always call with love. "My dear Xàbia".
For what I will repeat to the xabieros, from the respect and the love that I profess to them, that they maintain the hope and the high spirit, because:
Fogueres de Sant Joan
Les Fogueres come and go
Xàbia June 24, 2020
Juan Legaz Palomares
