The piglet game

‘Falta! Falta!’

The guy next to me was yelling excitedly towards the arena, waving his fist. Falta means ‘foul’ as when a footballer kicks another’s ankle, or ‘fault’ as when a tennis player hits the ball after it’s bounced twice (they rarely kick each other’s ankles).

In this case the falta was because one competitor had pushed another out of the way while both were trying to grab a piglet.

I’m not sure that I should write about this, for fear of upsetting delicate sensibilities, or of misrepresenting this kindly island, but the fact is it used to be an annual event. Our village fiesta in the summer was an all-weekend affair in those days, with Saturday devoted mainly to feasting, music and all-night dancing while Sunday was for family fun. The kids bounced in bouncy castles and splashed in bouncy play pools while the adults stood around sipping beer. There were adult games too, such as the wheelbarrow race in which young men wheeled young women around the sports ground pursued by others trying to empty buckets of water over them.

The highlight of all this jollity came in the early afternoon, with la suelta del lechón. The release of the piglet, a game that attracted crowds of spectators from the town and the other villages around. The arena was a section of the riverbed (always dry in summer) smoothed out and spread with sand. A largish piglet, about the size of a spaniel, would be released into the arena and allowed to run free while two or three competitors tried to catch it.

The piglet was provided with shelters made from wooden pallets to hide behind, and its legs were thoroughly greased so that grabbing just one leg was unlikely to be enough. The winner was anyone who managed to lift it bodily from the ground and carry it around the arena. Winners of the various bouts would then compete in a final play-off. And this was a game worth playing, because the winner kept the piglet, donated by a local farmer.

This was country life, where animals were for people to use. Most families kept a pig. Every now and again a lorry would tour around the villages selling live piglets to be fattened up, much as other vendors came round selling fresh fish. (They still do.) Most families also kept chickens and often a couple of goats.

I have a vivid memory of a neighbour allowing two recently-born kids to scamper around the street, springing joyfully into the air like little toys on wind-up legs. ‘They’re happy to be alive,’ he commented, chuckling. He too was happy they were alive, because they’d fetch a good price a few weeks later from a local restaurant where fresh cabrito - young goat - was a prized delicacy. (It still is.)

One of the village’s pigs lived in a small enclosure we regularly cycled past, and it would always pop its head up, front trotters on the wall, to watch us with bright eyes and its ears pricked up expectantly. We greeted it with a friendly comment about the weather or the coming elections. Pigs are intelligent animals and worthy of respect.

We were, of course, deeply uncomfortable about watching la suelta del lechón, and we were not alone. Even in those days, when the onlookers ringed the arena three-deep and noisily cheered or reprimanded, it was obvious that many of them didn’t really like the spectacle. ‘Not a lot of fun for the piglet,’ a shopkeeper from the town commented, turning to lead his two youngsters back to the car. You could sense that this event would soon be history.

The last suelta took place quite a few years ago, with only a straggle of spectators and a handful of competitors. Many families still keep animals and chickens but they don’t play games with them. I’m not at all sorry that the piglet game has gone, but nobody quite knows what to put in its place. Like bullfighting, it is what it is, and there is no real substitute.

Bullfighting, by the way, has been banned throughout the Canary Islands since 1991, and I’m not sorry about that either.