I don’t know how I ended up here, standing in the middle of a village square, hands warm from a bag of roasted chestnuts, watching a fire crackle while an old man tunes his guitar. I mean, I know how—I walked out of my house this morning and followed the smell of woodsmoke and sugar. But what I don’t know is how I went from a life where I barely spoke to my neighbors in London to one where I’m being handed a glass of something strong by a woman I barely know, who grins and tells me, “Drink, inglés. It’s for the cold.” It’s not even cold. But I drink anyway.
The Fiesta de la Castañas is something else. Whole village out in the streets, old men hunched over tables playing cards, kids chasing each other through the smoke from roasting chestnuts. Somewhere, someone’s already playing the cajón, that deep, hollow drumbeat that makes you feel like something’s about to happen.
And then the flamenco starts.
I’d seen flamenco before. In London, in tourist spots. It never did much for me. But this? This is different. It doesn’t feel like a performance. It erupts. Like it’s always been there, simmering, just waiting for an excuse. The guitarist doesn’t even look at his hands, just plays like he was born with the strings woven into his fingers. The singer’s voice is raw, rising, falling, breaking. Then the dancers—sharp, fierce, completely lost in it.
It’s impossible not to feel it.
Someone nudges me, shoving a plate into my hands. Migas—fried breadcrumbs with chorizo, olive oil, and garlic. There’s jamón serrano, thick hunks of queso curado, some kind of stew I don’t recognize but tastes like a hug. And chestnuts—roasted, candied, ground into cakes, turned into liquor.
And no one eats alone.
Plates get passed around, glasses refilled before they’re even empty. Someone’s laughing, someone else is pulling a chair over, someone’s shouting across the table. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I stopped feeling like I was watching and started feeling like I was just part of it.
Later, after the sun’s dipped behind the mountains and the fire’s the only light left, I get pulled into a card game. Tute, apparently. Never played before. Doesn’t matter. The rules don’t seem to be the point. It’s all loud voices and mock outrage and someone smacking me on the back every time I play a terrible hand. I lose, obviously. And still somehow end up with another glass of cider and a handful of roasted chestnuts.
By the time I finally wander home, my clothes smell like smoke, my stomach’s full, and my head is buzzing—not just from the cider, but from the whole thing. The laughter, the music, the way no one here is on the outside looking in.
In London, celebrations were always something you watched. Something that happened around you. Here, they pull you in.
And this? This was just a festival about chestnuts. There are more. So many more.