Rivallry between small villages in well known – God help a young lad that tries to date a girl from a neighbouring village, but what happened in La Rábita involving village brass bands surprised just about everybody!

It was the village fiestas in La Rabita and a village band was needed to lead the procession. However, the Town Hall considered that its own band wasn’t up to it, so they called in the village band of Gualchos-Castell del Ferro – big mistake!

Before the evening was out, the Castell brass band was reportedly being stoned in the streets and the local band was being applauded. What had happened?

The problem has a lot to do with long-running ill feeling between La Rábita Town Hall, which is located in Albuñol, and the village cornetas y tambores band (bugles and drum). The two entities, owing to their history of discord, had not reached an agreement over the local band leading the procession for the Virgen del Mar. The band considers that the Town Hall is out to get them and the Town Hall thinks that the village band is more trouble than it was worth. So, the Town Hall signs a contract with the more up-market Castell village band for the three days that the fiestas last.

Not only was the Rabiteño band not impressed, but many of the villagers weren’t either. Then came the first procession. Such was the abuse and insults hurled, as well as the occasional stone, the Castell boys decided that they weren’t wanted and took flight. Before you could say, “stuff your procession,” all thirty members of the Castell band, including adults and children as young as ten years old, were panting inside their minibus.

But there are versions of what happened for all tastes. According to the Castell band leader, the villagers pinched the young girls bottoms and spat on the young boys, aged between 13 and 14 – in all his 44 years of being a musician, he says, he has never been through anything like it. Some of his younger band members lay awake at night, he claims, unable to expel the memory of a whole village turning on them.

Fortunately, the adults in the band and the adult villagers didn’t come to blows, mainly thanks to the village’s First Councillor who stopped the processions, amongst of chorus of booing.

But as we explained before, there is another version; that of the Rabiteños! In their opinion the fiesta had a satirical side to it, where topical affairs are touched upon using fancy dress, and one of the subjects was the village cornetas y tambores band’s plight. They booed, they admitted, but nobody pushed anybody around, spat or threw stones at anybody – the part about pinching young girls bottoms was not included in the list of denials… They did admit that the “ocsasional drunkard” might have got a bit carried away, but it was not the general tone of the protest.

The Chairman of the village cornetas y tambores band said that they were not going to apologise because they had done nothing – the Castell boys are their fellow musicians. “Everybody is pointing at us and our families but it’s all a lie, said the Chairman,” Pedro Melgares, adding, “if we had seen one of our members insulting the other band then we would have stopped them.”

In fact, the Rabiteños band phoned up their Castell counterparts the following day, asking them to come back, as they had been hired for another two days, but strangely enough, they declined the invitation.

(News: La Rabita, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)