TODAY SAN ANTÓN PATRON OF THE DONKEYS AND THE OLD CHRISTIANS WHO MANDUCABA JALUFO A DIFFERENTIAL FACT. THE CHENS BEGIN TO COCK AND FILL THE NEST WITH PINK EGGS

  SAN ANTON IN BENIDORM I DON'T WANT TO SEE THAT Fr. ANGEL EVEN IN PAINTING

 

For Saint Antón the hen lays and until Saint Antón it is Easter. Those snowfalls of my childhood when I went to school treading snow from the Valdevilla Bridge to the Claretian school, my boots sank in more than a quarter of the snow, covered our heads with balaclavas have given way to spring walks along the water from Benidorm.

Times change, but the party remains endearing. Here they celebrate it with "cremás" and we celebrate it with fillandones and slaughters (of the pig naturally)

 

It was then time of frost and ripples. Saint Anthony the Abbot was the peasant icon, patron of the Old Christians, of those who did not abhor pork. San Antón abhorred the jalufo of course and is represented with a pig on his feet.

 

He was the only mortal who, by the designs of providence, was able to tame a gocho and even made it speak and sing with the stones of the Syrian desert, where he lived a contemplative life until he was 105 years old. Ah, the toston of San Antón! the dark-skinned pig that has turned this anchorite holy man into the patron saint of animals.

 

January 17 is the saint of donkeys and, by extension, of all ducks or mammals, which they take to bless the door of the old Escolapios convent in the center of Madrid.

 

The converts who excelled at everything said that the Christian people were made up of cretins because they had a boss who protected the herds.

  However, I believe that this saint was very kind and miraculous. He provided the strings of sausages and the homemade choricillo.

Whatever they say about this bait animal that is not a companion, they are tasty until they walk.

 

Quevedo, the greatest poet of the Castilian language and of unclear origins because despite what critics say, he used classical Hebrew and was the only Spaniard of his time who had read the Old Testament in the original, had it taken with Don Luis de Góngora y Agorte, of much more uncertain origins and a new Christian, blames him for "fleeing from San Antón's piglet like the plague" and tells him that he was a Catarriberas, a Primavera, an upstart and dedicates the following sonnet to him:

 

I will smear my works with bacon/because you don't bite me, Gongorilla/dog of the sugar mills of Castile/skilled in taunts like a roadboy/Barely a man, an unworthy priest/who learned without Christ the primer/chocarrero of Córdoba and Seville/ and in the court you are a jester to the divine/Why do you censor the Greek language, being a rabbi of the Jewish language/something that your nose still does not deny?/Do not write verses anymore for the life of me/although these scribes stick to you/for having rebellion as a executioner.

 

Regal and very strong, but these sonnets have little to do with the tranquility of my soul while I walk along the Benidorm dock and in Levante the festival of the patron saint is celebrated with large bonfires and the bells of the Carmen church ring, flooding with peace and serenity the urban landscape of this blessed city, one of the friendliest in Spain, full of the Valencian seny, very far from the television brawls and the riot of aggressiveness that my Spain experiences, in peace thank God and with the desire to enjoy and to live.

 

Hairs to the sea. The chickens begin to crow and the roosters launch their triumphant epithalamios at dawn. Long live San Antón in this sweet and peaceful Benidorm of guiris and jubilatas

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