Reading more about the festival afterward, with my feet sore from attempting the dances along to the rhythm of the gaita and its accompanying tamborines (we stayed late into the night, and hiked back down the mountain under the light of the stars), I felt even more the magic of that day’s experience.
According to all the articles I found, my experience was true to the letter: each source agrees that this festival is traditionally celebrated in the grove of chestnuts (souto) and begins in the early evening in order to gather the chestnuts that they’ll roast later. Sticks and pine needles are used to light several bonfires (this was true!), and chestnuts are roasted on the floor, directly in the fire—which also was the case. Furthermore, children were playing in the mud to dirt their faces with soot and ash, just as the sources describe. The adults dance and sing, jumping over the remains of the fire.
But what the research articles never mention is the crisp fall magic that blankets the chestnut grove, or the extreme kindness of all the galician people we found there: in fact, we even got a botany lesson on the uniqueness of Spanish cork trees and the crazy-looking berry called o madroño (picked right from a tree beside our heads) used to make home-brewed forms of liquor. The tourism articles never capture the smell of bonfire smoke that stays in your scarf and hair for days afterward; they don’t they fill their pages with the rich lyrics in galego of songs that were sung deep into the night; nor do they tell you the hidden coordinates of this secret chestnut party, tucked away in the woods.
