Heartbeat: A journey through the fiestas of Spain

by Simon Prichard

"Simon Prichard's unique quest in search of 'fiesta forever' takes him to the soul of Spain: pious, arcane, profoundly odd and richly comic." Tim Adams, The Observer

This is the story of how I escaped the rat race and found my inner Spaniard...

I was 37, divorced, jobless and lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the London property ladder. So I did the sensible thing: I cashed my redundancy cheque and set off on a six-month fiesta tour of Spain, in the hope of rekindling my affair with the country I had fallen in love with in my teens.

Heartbeat: A journey through the fiestas of Spain tells how I took part in dozens of festivals, including a smoke procession, a drunken tree-climbing competition and a parade of cross-dressing soldiers. It explains how I saw young men whip themselves with medieval scourges and was beaten with burning torches by an entire village.

It shows what a 200-day party feels like - and what happens when you stop.

236 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 21, 2013

Reviews

[Phil Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simon Prichard’s well written account of his half year touring the fiestas of Spain provides a unique perspective of this colourful country. From the pub lined lanes of Benidorm to the solemn streets of San Vincente de la Sonsierra, he sought out the most interesting examples of the nation’s local festivities. Almost always religiously inspired but seldom formal, the fiestas he discovered were as varied as the landscape. The Spain he visited was not one constrained by the concerns of health and safety, he witnessed a horde of inebriated lumberjacks fell and drag an enormous tree through the streets of Pollenca and had his clothes singed by men wielding flaming witches brooms as they chased him through the streets of Jarandilla. Prichard’s style of writing is lively, engaging and a pleasure to read. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who is on the look out for their next book.