Oktoberfest in San Fulgencio

You don't have to read the statistics to know that many regions of Spain, from the Costa Blanca White Coast) in the north, to the Costa del Sol (Sun Coast) in the southwest, are filled with foreigners. You only have to go to the local hipermarket (ours is Carrefour, itself a French company) to hear a babel of languages: Spanish, yes, and English, but also German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, French, and others I cannot distinguish.

Many of the speakers are permanent residents, a large number of them pensioners or early retirees, who came originally for the sun and perhaps a less expensive standard of living. An increasing number are men and women in their thirties and forties who have left the northern climate to live and work in an area that is warmer in degrees Celsius but also, they say, in spirit. Almost universally people in this group say they are here for the lifestyle: they work hard during work hours, but here, as opposed to where they came from, there is time in the day for themselves, their children, and a social life outside the home.

Last Sunday we ventured out to the First Annual Oktoberfest in San Fulgencio, a small town close by that was recently reported to have more than 70% non-Spanish population in residence. We remembered an Octoberfest that we had been to years ago at Lake Quassy in Middlebury, Connecticut, and looked forward to German music, dancing, beer, and bratwurst with anticipation. Presumably the festival was being organized by the Germans of San Fulgencio. But not much of civic culture in Spain gets organized without the support of the ayuntamiento, or local government. So how Spanish would this be? How German?

The German-Spanish coalition got it "spot on," as our British friends say. The tent, with a capacity of more than 800, was not completely full on Sunday afternoon, but there were enough people there to keep the two entertainers very busy playing música típica of Bavaria, singing in German, and generally stirring up the enthusiasm of the crowd in Spanish and German. We seated ourselves at one of the wall-to-wall picnic tables, scanned the German-Spanish-English menu, selected our salchichas/sausages, and made a slight dent in the 50,000 liters of typical German beer that had been promised for the week-long festival.

At the table behind us were two German-speaking older couples. I bumped butts with one of the gentlemen (dressed very unlike my idea of a German, in cream-colored dress pants and a salmon-colored shirt) as we swayed to the music with our glasses lifted high. The table in front of us was occupied by two young Spanish couples, each with a young daughter. A stroller sat at the end of the table, but neither girl was in it--they were crawling all around the table and benches, dancing and clapping to the music. We exchanged lots of smiles but no words. I don't think a soul at the Spanish table understood a word of the German, and I'm pretty sure the Spanish phrases just flew by the Germans at their table, but both parties were having fun.

So did we. I don't understand much German, either, but I recognized the music and I can lock arms, sing la-la-la-la, and sway with the best of them.

Prosit!