Ibiza- NOCHE DE SAN JUAN ( la nit de San Joan)

¨Romero y hinojo- limpieza
uvid- abundancia, baco, alegria
algarrobo- planta con los que se sontuvieron muchos anos los ibizencos
laurel- la victoria, julio cesar
olivo- de la paz, la paloma de la paz
se deja todoa la noche que el magnetizmo de la noche las impregna y la manana ponerse la mezcla encima del cuerpo¨

There are a couple of places in Europe I would choose to spend the equinox, the night of San John.
One is Sweden with the big pagan feast of equinox where the shortest night is celebrated. All around new potatos!Georgious, tasty, tiny new potatos with fenel sauce... Another place is Ireland with its gaelic druidic rituals. And the third one is Ibiza-where the saint John is only an alusion but the night is about celebrating magic, witchcraft, fairies, burning the old and negative and rebirth to the new and positive. Alll beautifully symbolic.
SO, here we are in IBIZA!The protagonist of the night and our keys to this fiesta is ANA. This year is the first year that I can legally call this great woman, a friend of my previous life in Ibiza- a TIA!

TIA ANA, the aunt Ana.
Apart from being a beautiful AGLESS woman, she is an ARTIST. ( can help quating the last words after the spectacle she presented in Can Ventosa, the best theatre in Ibiza, along with other artists, finished with an act of undressing on the stage, in front of the public, one by one saying each one's name: ' Ana J. an artist' , in act of protest of cutting the governmental subsides for the artists of the island)

THIS IS THE BEST PHOTHO I think has ever been taken of her:

Ana, apart from being a painter,a cook ( Julio Iglesias self could not spent months of his holidays in Ibiza if Ana was not making her famous tortillas españolas for him) is an actress too ( this has been our common platform of art & meeting years ago...). This time she used her talent converting herself into a pristess:





The first part of the ceremony of San John's night took part in Dalt Vila of Eivissa, plaza Drassaneta, surrounded by magnificent views of the castle.
The gipsy place brightened up with the colours of disguised fairies, light projections and the fire shows.
The witch of the night was mixing the transformation herbs in her coldron: rosmary, laurel, olive, nettle, thyme, eucaliptus...

SHE WAS VERY CONVINCING, creating a magic atmosphere in this gipsy decadent part of the town.... with surrealist accent ( pic by the arquitect Victor D.)

Then the whole crowd and actors moved to the plaza del Siti for the ritual of fire:

We could hardly recognize tia Ana in this Greek -like prophecy teller:

We followed the rite of writing on the distributed piece of paper what we reject from our life forever. The negativity written on the paper was then put to the fire.

An almost full moon was a witness of the ceremony on this warm summer night.

Then the whole ' procession ' went through Calle de la Virgen to the open space with the view of the Sea and Talamanca Beach to make a big bonfire putting all the sculptures the local artists made, representing corruption. Needless to say Ana' s sculpture was also there. A big representation of a porc with an apple in the moth and open red belly with the snakes with the heads of the scull- a winner of this sculpture competition, made an impressive presence being the last consumed by the fire.
Luckily enough Ana's paitings were not burned. The new collection is going to be exhibited in the Palacio de Congreso, Santa Eulalia.