Maybe it’s because I’m from Manchester, but I’ve always been a beer drinker.
To a certain extent I still am – but I didn’t touch a drop for the week I was in Logroño. Over the New Year in 1982 – if memory serves, it might have been 1983… in fact, it might have started in 1982 and ended in 1983 – it’s understandable that it was such a memorable week, I remember little of it now 40 years later.
I do remember how the days worked. We woke, fresh and raring to seize the day – and this is important given what we then did each and every day of our time there.
We woke around noon, showered and headed into town… well, a specific part of town – two streets really with (it seems to me now, as it did then) nothing but bars.
And since these two streets were parallel, we made our way up one and then back down the other, stopping at (it seems to me now, as it did then) every bar along the way.
As we made our way, we picked up friends along the way, while others drifted away for food or sleep.
Being Logroño – the capital city of the Rioja region, we drank wine. Everybody drank wine.
It was all we drank. It was all anyone drank. Red, rose or white, served in squat glasses – not a wine glass in sight.
So as we wandered into each bar the order was 6 red, 4 rose, 3 white… and the bartender would simply line up 13 glasses along the bar and fill them from unlabelled wine bottles.
We didn’t know which wine it was, which vineyard. They were simply red, rose and white wines. And they were glorious.
Cheap and about as direct from the bodega as you can get we spent the first part of the day going from bar to bar, with the odd tapa in between some of the rounds (it seems to me now, as it did then) to keep us sustained.
Retiring for a (well deserved) siesta – and then out again at around 8pm to start again.
Which is why I mentioned earlier that we woke each day bright eyed and bushy tailed – not a hangover in sight and that (it seems to me now, as it did then) is nothing short of miraculous.
But that New Year will be remembered not only for the interminable pub crawl, but also for one of the strangest parties I’ve ever attended.
A couple of days before the end of the year, we had joined a group of about 15 on the “circuit” and one of the group told us about the NYE party that we should come along to. It was going to be held in a warehouse (this is, remember, well before the time of raves) and it was 5,000 pesetas (30 euros) per couple. That was quite a bit in those days (he says, sounding ever more like his Grandad) but we agreed, handing over the money to a strange and wondering if we would ever see them again.
As will all NYE parties in Spain, it began at around 2am – after all, you have to eat the grapes with your family watching the ball drop on the clock in the Plaza de Sol – and, sure enough the party was happening.
About 50 of us, with the music stupidly loud and a table so laden with drinks you wondered when everyone else was going to arrive.
We had been told we didn’t have to bring anything – and it was true. In addition to a bar that could have sustained the Foreign Legion for a month, there were small trays around the place with tobacco laced with hashish, alongside packs of papers and lighters.
And at around 5am two guys arrived with two trays of roast chickens – whole roast chickens from a rotisserie…. at 5am.
I have no idea where they came from, but we all feasted on them and then carried on partying until mid morning.
At that point it was decided that since there was so much drink left we should party again the next night. And we did. This time it was sandwiches at 4am.
For two nights we were simply one of the gang. Accepted and embraced in the way only Spaniards can accept and embrace a stranger.
And then we left, back to Manchester, with muddled memories of a week of drinking, eating, friendship… and a little sleep.
I must go back to Logroño….
