The rhythm of the drum was satanic; the crowd danced higher as the fire rained down

MATTHEW PARRIS

In Catalan the word esquirol means 'squirrel', but it also means 'blackleg' or 'scab'. Why, I do not know — any more than I know why those words in English are used to describe a strike-breaking employee. Catalans have for many decades nicknamed the little town of Santa Maria de Corci) 'Esquirol'.

It seems that near the beginning of the last century, during a general strike of textile labourers in the area, mill workers from Santa Maria ignored it, attracting to their town a sobriquet which, at first intended bitterly. came finally to be used with affection.

To call a town Squirrel is pleasantly cheeky, though the loss of the more dignified 'St Mary of the cork oak trees' seems sad. Many of the townspeople have taken their town's nickname to their hearts, and, being Catalan, prefer it to the more traditional Spanish 'Santa Maria'. Road signs which omit the colloquial alternative get 'Santa Maria' aerosol-sprayed out, and replaced.

Esquirol lies in the foothills of the Pyrenees about halfway from Barcelona to Andorra, and an hour's drive inland from the Mediterranean. The town looks pleasant but undistinguished. To those who (like one of my brothers) live there. Esquirol is apparently a friendly community, quite tightly-knit, with everything — shops, school, bank, pharmacy, surgery, good restaurant and relaxed little café-bars — you could need; but the tourist (if there were any) might notice no more than narrow streets and steep lanes crowded with unpretentious stone houses, and a wide but workaday view out across the dusty plain. The church which, as ever, dominates the town from raised ground, is imposing, with a big, angular tower. Though of traditional design. it appears fairly recent. Like many churches in Catalonia, Santa Maria's was burned out during the Civil War.

So far, so unsurprising. As I drank a beer in the cool of the evening outside the bar near the church, I had not the least idea what was about to hit me.

My brother and sister had suggested we meet at Esquirol for a meal. Last week was their summer fiesta, and on Friday night, apparently. there would be some fireworks in the square at ten. We could watch these then retreat for a late supper. This sounded a nice idea. When a bystander politely suggested we move our car from a street strangely emptied of vehicles, we thought nothing of it.

At ten there was an almighty bang. 'That's the warning rocket,' said my sister. All the town's lights went out, mysteriously extinguished. I noticed people — what looked like half the town — crowding towards the open space below the church. Why were all the younger people wearing wide-brimmed straw hats? Why had the children swathed their faces in scarves? Why were those youths wearing devils' horns?

And then it started. These were not fireworks. This was a deluge of fire. This was a rain of terror.

A man in a straw hat holding above his head what looked like a devilish candelabra — a great spiky reindeer's antler of a thing made of iron, festooned with dozens of tiny finger-length packages, cylindrical in shape — ran into the middle of the crowd.

There was a flash. All the fingers on the candelabra exploded into light. With a deafening, fizzing whirr, all began twirling like Catherine-wheels, showering sparks. For the minute the eruption lasted this diabolical machine became a spitting, flaming, crackling explosion of light.

I say 'showering sparks' but that hardly captures it. It was more like being under a minor volcano. Thousands of tiny points of fire came cascading down on to the heads of the crowd, who began to dance. Someone was beating a drum in a slow, ominous rhythm which I can only describe as satanic. The crown danced higher as the fire rained down.

Another candelabra was run into the crowd. Cheering and stamping, the whole assembly moved off in a cloud of sulphurous smoke, a warlike procession dancing down the street. Amazed, we followed.

Gunpowder candelabras, at the top of each a small Christian cross, seemed to be arriving from nowhere, but soon we realised that the same structures were being continually re-armed with fresh gunpowder fingers pulled from a hundred stuffed pockets. The downward slope of the lane beneath our feet ran with sparks like a river of brimstone. Young men and children made daredevil rushes to get right beneath the fountain — dancing round the mouth, as it were, of the volcano itself, which in a geyser of fire cascaded its sparks in a wide circle all around.

And this was the paradox: you were of course safest from the danger if you never came anywhere near. But if you must come near, if you were curious, then you were safest joining forces with the devils who were its source. Those who flirted at evil's edge stood the greater chance of being burned.

There was no light save from the sparks. In lulls between the firing up of new stacks of gunpowder sticks there would be a darkness, and hush. Then the bang and crackle and the blinding orange flame would light up the street again, illuminating the faces of scores who watched from their balconies, or from within. The drums would beat and the dancers would move on.

In bursts of fire and deafening flashes of light, the cavalcade proceeded to the bottom of the street. In a square there a whole blinding salvo of new explosions awaited — and then. drums thumping, we made our way back uphill, up another narrow street. How many barrels of gunpowder were consumed in the 20 minutes of mayhem it took us to make the journey to and from the front of the church. I cannot estimate. For hours afterwards I could hardly hear.

Was it over now? From within the belfry of the church tower, a hundred feet above us, came a huge explosion. All at once, rockets started firing from inside the tower, shooting off in all directions like a wild salvo of mortars. A Niagara of orange sparks cascaded over the edges of the belfry. The belfry itself was billowing crimson smoke as rockets shot out. The whole church had become a sort of arsenal of fire.

This had not been just merriment, a celebration of light and colour; there was something dark behind the exuberance, something meant to frighten. The church tower spitting flame and red smoke, the crosses dancing on the top of the fizzing, crackling candelabra, the mobbing of the devils by children. . . to me they seemed to be saying that in the end God and Satan work together, terrorise together, and are to be respected and feared together. The undertone was dualist, Manichaean.

If you have a map of north-eastern Spain, see if you can find Esquirol: one small dot among many. Looking at it, you wouldn't have expected much. I didn't. But now and for ever the night of 17 August will invade my dreams.

Matthew Parris is a political columnist of the Times.