Saintly thoughts

 At around eight-thirty in the evening there came a knock on our front door. I opened it to find young Agustín standing there, looking puzzled. 'Why aren't you two down on the plaza with us?'

We could hear cheerful music from a live band with guitars and the tinkly little mini-guitars called timples, and people singing along to traditional Canary Islands tunes. The plaza was decorated with strings of colourful bunting flapping in the breeze.

'There's food and wine,' Agustín added needlessly. There's always food and wine.

I hesitated. The reason we weren't on the plaza was that this party was in honour of San Benito, one of the two patron saints of the village, and the people celebrating had all honoured him in the proper Catholic manner. They'd earned the right to party afterwards, while we certainly had not.

We hadn't attended Mass in the chapel, despite the urgent clanging of the bell. (Nobody clangs a church bell as urgently as Miguelito, who is otherwise very limited in his capabilities but put a bell rope in his hand and he's matchless.) We hadn't followed the effigy of the saint in solemn procession around the streets of the village, led by a folk group performing the weird and spine-tingling Gomeran chanting to the rhythm of drums and castanets. We hadn't followed the saint back into the chapel to make sure he was safely back in his niche.

All we did in the way of involvement was wave to a few people from our balcony. Not to the priest, dignified in his flowing robes the colour of rich cream, because he diplomatically took care not to see us.

In short, it would have been hypocritical to join in the jollity afterwards. I couldn't face trying to explain this to Agustín so we pleaded tiredness, been a long day, lots of exercise and so on, none of which he believed but in the end he gave up and headed back to the plaza.

Janine was comfortably stretched on the sofa with a book in her hand. 'He was disappointed,' I told her.

'He was just being polite.'

'No, he looked really disappointed. As though he'd sort of failed. I feel guilty for turning him down.'

After a minute or two of reiterating to each other our perfectly valid and praiseworthy reasons for not joining the party, the guilt got the upper hand. We put on our shoes and stepped out of the front door to meet Agustín approaching again, this time holding two plates of bread and cheese, accompanied by Roberto with two plastic beakers of red wine.

They paused, momentarily confused, then broke into big smiles. Agustín handed his two plates to Roberto, who somehow managed to grab them without spilling the wine, then took Janine's elbow to help her down the steps.

I suspect it had been decided that the real reason we didn't want to join the party was because Janine's balance is unreliable and, especially in twilight, the steps down to the plaza could be tricky. With me on one side and Agustín on the other she was fine but someone else came bounding up the steps to hold my elbow as a second level of safety while another guy went down the steps backwards just in front of us in case the three of us screwed up and let her tumble.

I have to admit that by now I was close to emotional meltdown. I mean, it was just so nice of them. One way or another, they were determined we weren't going to miss out on a village party. The clue is right there, of course: it was a party for the village. The religious business was as important as ever but this time they'd brought in a folk group to sing and play, solemnly for the procession then in fiesta mode for the rest of the evening. We hadn't recognised that crucial difference.

So we did our best to make up for this blunder for the next couple of hours, eating and drinking, meeting and greeting, chatting. It reminded me nostalgically of the now sadly defunct Asociación de Vecinos, Neighbours' Association, which used to organise such events much more often. Now we'll have to wait for the next saint's day to come around.

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San Benito Abad, 'the abbot', seems to have favoured a very ascetic form of monasticism in 6th century Italy and successfully promoted his Regla, a strict regime, as an aspiration for others. It's interpreted perhaps a little leniently here.

However, as I see it, the saints' days are an important factor in Catholicism's continuing success in the modern world. Each village has its own saint or saints, so there's direct ownership. In celebrating the saint they're celebrating their own little community. What's more, in any Catholic event there are required reverences of course but afterwards you are allowed to frolic.

Which leads me to a question I regularly ask myself and have never managed to answer satisfactorily: if you took religion out of the picture, is there anything else that could take its place as a social glue?

On present evidence, the answer seems to be no. Our village has an annual non-religious fiesta which used to include fun stuff like wheelbarrow races but mostly its focus now is on the dance in the evening which brings in all the young people and ageing boppers from miles around. It's not really about us, the village community.

On a broader scale there's a Día de Canarias, Canary Islands Day, and even a Día de la Hispanidad which is to celebrate being Hispanic wherever you live, but nobody seems very sure what to do with either of those.

By far the jolliest annual event is the Romería in January with multiple groups singing and dancing in the streets of San Sebastián - but that's in honour of the patron saint…

Or some prefer the annual Carnaval with its elected Queen and a carnival procession of decorated floats, but even that is a kind of rebellion against authority including the church. Several days of fun end with a mock funeral in which a giant sardine is carried slowly through the streets to a doleful drumbeat, followed by an irreverant bishop spraying the crowd with holy water from a chamber pot. Take away the religion and all you're left with to deride is the local council, a much more modest target.