This is the name of a sort of festival of the combined villages in our part of the Herault. I wish I could explain the significance of the name; it seems to refer to some aligning reference about our area.
The lane just to the left of our front door, the one we use to go down to the shops is called Rue del Catet, this obviously has some significance in the name of the festival, as we were to discover this morning.
As we started to leave the house at around eleven we noticed two large bags of cushions at the top of the Rue del Catet, (perhaps I should explain at this moment that this Rue is not really in any way a street, a steps for most of its way it joins another Ruelle, or little lane, before it hits the village.) After the first flight of steps there is a little square and here were set two chairs and there were a lot of officials with badges being officious and some quite glamorous people talking loudly in Spanish.
The cushions were for the steps we discovered as people began to take their places and sit there and so the two chairs were going to provide a small, intimate arena, like a mini Orange or Verona, for a performance at the bottom.
It became established that it was going to be a recital of Flamenco singing by one Mariano Zamora and his guitarist Jose Luis Navarro.
I had discovered to my surprise last year while on holiday in Andalucia that I had a huge tolerance of Flamenco that amounted to liking and this was amazing to see that this had actually arrived at my door.
I quickly texted my friend Michael in Andalucia who assured me that Mariano was a true Flamenco artist, and his nickname was
El Amerense (which from previous experience of nicknames in that world probably means something like the fat cow.)
Michael’s recognition was correct though, the man was an artist and I thoroughly enjoyed the next hour of Flamenco, Seanós with guitar- incredibly skilful guitar- would give you a little flavour of the sort of music I was enjoying.
It went down very well indeed, not so surprising when you consider the strongly Spanish nature of Thezan who, if the grave yard is to be believed, are mostly of Spanish origin, and if the local histories are to be believed, have been here since they fled from the Moors in the twelfth century.
The people quickly dissipated after the concert so the street was again quiet about fifteen minutes afterwards when we decided to head off on our aborted trip.
As I stood proprietarily at my doorstep El Amerense passed by and I had the satisfaction of saying bravo to his face (to which he bowed his head and said; “Merci”)