The Thrill of Menorca Holiday Fiestas

During the Menorca holiday season the towns come alive with the fiestas. The Spanish passion for horses is brought to life enliven with celebrations of music, costume and jubilation, a spectacle that you should not miss on your Menorca holidays.

Every year Menorca becomes a country of colour and celebration during the national public holidays in Menorca and the summer fiesta season. The annual cycle of Menorca holidays and fiestas begins with the Festival of Sant Joan towards the end of June, in the town of Ciutadella. This festival weekend is the largest of the island’s celebrations with towns around the countryside hosting their own regional versions throughout the Menorcan holiday season.

On June the 23rd, the locals (and visitors from across the island) pour out from their Menorca villas in their thousands for days of dance and procession in the Ciutadella streets under strings of lights and paper bunting. The Spanish passion for horses is brought to life in a series of horse trials and parades, leading up to tests of riding skill. Usually, the riders wear the classic Spanish riding uniform: immaculate white trousers and shirt, with a riding jacket, boots and classic Spanish peaked hat, all in black. Sometimes they carry spears or flags as they perform.

The horses are rigorously trained to keep calm amongst the animated spectators, who try to get close to the action. The most popular stunts in the “dances of horses” are when the riders make the horses rear up, and some even walk on their hind legs. The crowd gets very close to the horses and throw their hands up, trying to touch it while its front legs are raised. If you choose the right time of year to witness this on your Menorca holiday you may even see the local children doing this; it is considered good luck to touch the horses during the fiestas, and is a test of skill for the spectator, too.

This spectacle and the celebration of the horse is common to the festivals throughout the island, as is the uplifting music of the brass bands, which take the stage or the centre of a procession, and get people dancing and singing in the streets and on the balconies.

Each town across Menorca has its own local twist on the fiesta. Depending on what time of year you take your Menorca holiday, you could see twelve feet tall paper-mâché puppets dancing together between the Menorca villas, or see a barefoot man clad in sheepskin carrying a ewe on his shoulders through the town.

In the municipality of es Migjorn Gran you might come across the unusual fiesta of Sant Cristòfol. As well as the expected pageantry and music, it is traditional here for the local priest to bless each of the local cars. Perhaps if you hire a car on your Menorcan holiday it could be blessed as well! In the middle of July, when all the Balearic Islands celebrate their patron saint of sailors, “Dia de Virgen de Carmen,” it is the turn of the fishing boats to be blessed.

With all these regional variations, you stand a chance of finding a summer fiesta nearby wherever your Menorca villa is located, so you can add some party atmosphere and tradition to your Menorca holidays of blue sea, sand and sun.