23rd June part 2

The main square was full. We waited for something to do with horses but we weren't sure what. A man dressed in black entered riding a donkey. He was banging a drum and blowing a whistle. Then a man riding a horse, also dressed formally in black with hat and black bow tie, boots and spurs. The horse was decorated with a colourful saddle cloth, ribbons in its tail and a Spanish saddle. Then came another horse and rider, and another. Lucinda estimates that there were about a hundred of them. The riders were all male with some who were quite old and one in an oversized suit was about 12 years old. They were all in black apart from the second in line and the second from last who wore white trousers and white bow ties. Last of all was a clergyman in a dog collar. The band started playing. They only had one tune which they repeated again and again, but it was good and catchy. The horses paraded round the square in and through the crowds. In front of the orchestra each rider wheeled his mount round and made it rear up on it's hind legs. People were hanging on to the horses, standing underneath as they reared up and turned full circles. The music played, the horses reared, the crowd were frenzied and it went on and on. When this had finally ended there was a break before hazelnut throwing commenced. Tonight the adolescents were at it. Extreme pick up techniques consisted of lobbing a handful of nuts at a girl you fancied and then getting your mates to throw her up into the air. By this time many were clutching plastic bottles or glasses of iced Gin and lemon. We sat in a narrow passage waiting for the final event. Great posses of people passed us in both directions. Many stumbling and weaving and clutching their drinks. There were some couples and a few older people. Most were groups of girls holding hands or swaggering boys. Then the horses came down the passage at a fast trot. In front of them was more than a wall of people. It was a densely packed mass. Without any hesitation the horses plunged into the melee, rising up on their hind legs and rotating in 360 degree turns. Somehow there was space in the seething mass for the horses to be swallowed up and surrounded as they ploughed through the crowd. We could see them down the road leaping and turning above the pack of people until they were out of sight. Time after time it seemed as though someone would get crushed or a rider unseated. Around the horses pressing in on them, people were singing, leaping up and down with arms outstretched, and yelling a repetitive song with lots of oles in it. It was terrifying and extraordinary to watch.