Flashes of brilliance

There were de­li­ciously dodgy mo­ments, large help­ings of pluck and - star­tlingly - some blind­ing bril­liance, until the storm sud­denly broke and nigh on a thou­sand peo­ple scat­tered in all di­rec­tions.

The fore­cast­ers had is­sued a bleak warn­ing. The or­gan­is­ers knew what might hap­pen if they pressed ahead, but they wanted to give the peo­ple the chance to be there.

If any of us were in any doubt what was about to hap­pen, within min­utes of the open-air spec­ta­cle start­ing we had cer­tainty. The night sky was flash­ing omi­nous warn­ings to the west while on stage Al­bert, Joan Sal­vador and two other mid­dle-aged men in white tutus were flash­ing far more than that.

The in­del­i­cate but some­how en­chant­ing corps de bal­let, stretched to the limit (like their tights) by the chore­og­ra­phy of Swan Lake, twin­kled back and forth across the stage and set the un­bri­dled tone for the night. This sell-out vil­lage tal­ent show had moved out­side to swell the au­di­ence and, hence, the cof­fers. What en­sued be­tween the poly­va­lent and school, be­neath rustling yel­low bunting and all in aid of politi­cians in prison, would be in­deli­ble and, due to the thump­ing vi­o­lence that in­ter­vened, some­what al­le­gor­i­cal.

It was a reprise of a sim­i­lar show in the vil­lage 20 years ago. Li­brar­i­ans, farm­ers, doc­tors, teach­ers, restau­ran­teurs, ac­coun­tants, teenagers and se­niors, the hearts and souls that are the sum of any com­mu­nity worth its salt, had clearly been rig­or­ously re­hearsed by our res­i­dent em­pre­sario Remei. Women and men, though it was a chal­lenge at times to work out which was which, shed in­hi­bi­tions and turned it up to full vol­ume with their con­sid­ered in­ter­pre­ta­tions of Abba, Queen and a long list of clas­sic songs and scenes. Aretha Franklin, rightly, got one of the loud­est cheers. Those tak­ing part will never for­get their sum­mer of 2018 and nei­ther will we. Thank you Remei. Your plays over the years, your cre­ativ­ity, your fun, have been the cat­a­lysts for so many ful­fil­ments, so much en­rich­ing, es­sen­tial laugh­ter and joy. And that, when it comes to com­mu­nity, could not be more se­ri­ous and im­por­tant.

Imag­ine a long queue of peo­ple in town wait­ing pa­tiently, then a few begin to move when some music streams through the bank or bread shop. Like in the film The Full Monty. And, yes, we had a bit of that “lordy-do, you-are-not-re­ally-going-to….OOOOH!” man-kini cheek­i­ness too.

When the storm hit halfway just after the in­ter­val, when all was going so well, there was pre­cious lit­tle time to avoid being pelted.

But did it stop the mo­men­tum? Per­form­ers and au­di­ence let the vi­o­lence pass, re­grouped the next day and fin­ished what they had started. Noth­ing was going to pre­vent what the peo­ple needed, what was be­yond a shadow of doubt the essence of com­mu­nity – a show of good­will and strength founded in an un­bend­ing be­lief in what is right and nec­es­sary to thrive: shar­ing, sup­port­ing, iden­tity and be­long­ing.

And, stag­ger­ingly, it was some­how arranged for Car­les Puigde­mont to make an ap­pear­ance too.