Suddenly - the oldest trick in the book - Lorenzo glanced sideways with a startled expression. Miguel looked in the same direction and Lorenzo leaped forward, squeezing his weapon as he went. A jet of fine white powder hit Miguel unerringly in the chest.
‘Aagh! Cabrón!’ (you swine!). Miguel set off at a gallop after his opponent who was disappearing into the crowd, hooting with laughter.
We were witnessing the very beginnings of a culture change. A big one, for which you can award much of the credit or blame to Gomera’s close neighbour, the island of La Palma. And Cuba.
Not so long ago the Día de los Polvos, Powder Day, was a minor event of the week-long party known as Carnaval that fills a fiesta vacancy between New Year and Easter. Aimed mainly at the kids, Día de los Polvos was assigned to the quiet Monday before the big procession of carnival floats and dancers on Tuesday. It was basically a licence for young boys (it was always the boys) to unleash their inner hooligan, chasing each other through the streets with big tubes of talcum powder.Some of them also targeted unwary foreigners, which they were not supposed to do at all. More than once I had to severely warn a threatening urchin ‘Do not attempt to spray me, young man, or there will be grave repercussions,’ then scold him severely when he sprayed me anyway. After the first couple of years we learned to stay at home on the Día de los Polvos.
The change came about fairly quickly when a few grown men realised that these young delinquents were having a lot of fun. Fuelling the transformation was the television coverage of the Fiesta de los Indianos in La Palma, which the Palmeros had long ago turned into a major attraction that drew crowds not only from all over La Palma but also from the other Canary Islands and even mainland Spain. As in the rest of the Carnaval celebrations this is a day for letting loose, for unlimited fun and loud music, but the chief characteristic is that everybody wears white clothing and pours talcum over everybody else. The music is always Cuban, which is almost impossible to resist dancing to, or jiggling or at the very least twitching, and the air rapidly becomes a swirling fog filled with wild white figures gyrating inside it.
For me the images transmitted by those brave television crews are a stark warning to keep well away from the madness, but other people find it strangely compelling. No doubt under pressure from these more party-minded citizens, the town council here in San Sebastián decided a few years ago to add a little something to our own very low-key event. They organised a dance in the evening for adults, clearly labelled as a special dance for Día de los Polvos. A salsa dance band would play in the main pedestrian street, cafes and bars would be open until late and kioscos would stay open all night.
Guidelines were issued on how one should dress for this occasion, although everyone knew already from observing the Palmeros. White clothing is obligatory as well as practical, given that any other colour will soon turn white anyway, but you are also supposed to present an old-world appearance, vaguely 1800s, with the men parading in smart white suits and a panama hat while the ladies swish beside them in long white dresses. Optional accessories are a white sun-umbrella for the women and a small leather suitcase for the men. Oh, and a big cigar, and a bottle of rum. And bring your own talcum powder.
It was an instant success. Locals prepared for it with typical enthusiasm, turning up in their hundreds to fill the town with music, laughter and a sweet-smelling fog. Amazingly, it has now become one of the most popular features of Carnaval, with two Cuban music groups playing in the evening followed by an all-night dance with two full dance bands.
On the morning after the revelries of Día de los Polvos the pedestrian streets, lamp-posts and shop windows have mostly turned white like the revellers, but the council sends in a clean-up team and a neat little electric vehicle armed with a high-pressure hose to wash it all away.
Ironically, this year the event followed immediately after the heaviest calima we’d had for at least thirty years. Calima is extremely fine dust from the Sahara desert which hangs in the air like a dry fog. Usually it’s more misty than foggy but this time it was denser than a Delhi smog and turned cars and streets a dull pink, so what with that and the talcum powder the town ended up looking like grandma’s bedroom after the kids had run amok with her make-up. Smelled nice though.
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So what’s it all about? Why the talcum powder, why the old-fashioned clothes? The clue is in the La Palma name for the event, the Fiesta de los Indianos. Its origins go back to the 19th century when Palmeros who had emigrated to the Indies - that’s the West Indies, and especially Cuba - returned home considerably richer than they’d left, dressed like gentlefolk instead of peasants, smoking big Havana cigars, drinking Cuban rum and even trailing creole servants to carry their luggage in leather suitcases. They were aping the European colonials who had occupied Latin America. Perhaps a little too showy, perhaps a little boastful of their new wealth, perhaps deserving the gentle mockery they received in the annual fiesta. The event was incorporated into Carnaval somewhat later, in the early 1900s.The white powder is a bit of a mystery but among the various explanations I’ve read, the most likely is that in Cuba in those early days some blacks and dark-skinned creoles practised rituals that involved whitening the skin. Whatever they used it wouldn’t have been talcum, which is a modern convenience. And one for which I’m sure the local sell-everything Chinese bazaar is deeply grateful. In the weeks leading up to Carnaval they stock up with pallet-loads of the stuff, hundreds of giant tubes, all of which get sprayed into oblivion in the course of a few hours. Beats the heck out of selling it in tiny dispensers for the comfort of baby’s bottoms.
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