Javea Fiestas - San Antonio Abad

San Antonio Abad - Fiesta Activities

If you ever wanted to get your pet hamster or snake blessed, then this weekend you should head on down to Javea for the Fiesta San Antonio Abad, where San Antonio will be honoured in this traditional fashion.

San Antonio

The Port

The activities begin on Saturday morning (17th January) at about 9:00am with a parade around the streets of the port accompanied by traditional music.  This is followed by mass and then the blessing of the animals.

Old town

In the pueblo, this day is spent preparing for the burning of the pine which occurs in the evening, accompanied by a brass band. Then on Sunday, also in the pueblo, there is a similar type of parade to  that of the previous day in the port, which starts (appropriately enough) in Calle San Antonio.  This culminates in the Plaza de la Constitución, where there will be another animal blessing session, followed by the parading of an image of San Antonio back to the street which bears his name.
There is usually some drinking and eating going on the whole time and it's great fun for all ages. 

Why Animals?

The reason for the blessing of the animals is that San Antonio is the patron saint of animals among many other things.  The reason for the burning of the pine is less clear however.

Public Holidays in Spain 2015

List of Spain's public holidays in 2015

Public holidays (or Fiestas) in Spain are divided into two main types; national and regional.  Obviously, the national fiestas are observed across the whole country and the regional fiestas are relevant only in the individual autonomous communities, Javea is the the 'Communidad Valencia' and so has slightly different dates to Andalusia for example.

Below is a list of the dates for National Fiestas in Spain for 2015:

• January 1st: (Thursday)
• January 6th: (Epiphany, Tuesday)
• April 3rd: (Good Friday)
• May 1st: (Labour Day, Friday)
• August 15th: (Assumption of Mary, Saturday)
• October 12th  (Spanish National Day, Monday)
• December 8th: (Immaculate Conception, Tuesday).
• December 25th: (Christmas Day, Friday)

Valencia Public Holidays (which includes Javea, Denia, Moraira etc)

• March 19th: Saint Joseph
• April 6th: Easter Monday
• October 9th: Valencian Regional Day
• December 7th: Monday after Constitution Day

In addition to the above fiestas, there are often certain dates set aside by the individual towns for local fiestas, a full description of the fiestas in Javea will follow later this week.

To see a full list of all the National and Regional fiestas, visit www.thelocal.es

Merry Christmas from Javea Home Finders

 Javea Home Finders would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year in 2015.

2014 has been a fabulous year and we have great hopes for next year, signs in Javea are good and we have had many tourists over the main summer months.  All this bodes well, and there is an optimistic feel around the place with new businesses opening and a large increase in new build applications with the town hall.

We hope to continue to build on our largely UK based clientèle, whilst at the same time placing a firmer foothold in the French speaking markets of Europe such as France and Belgium.

This will take the form of a fully translated French website where all our properties in Javea are listed.

We have been in our enlarged office for a year now, and this has been successful as the wider frontage attracted more passers by and allows for a larger area to display our wide variety of villas and apartments for sale in Javea and the surrounding areas.  This has also allowed us to offer a long term rental service to those passers by, where in the past we had to turn them away.  As time goes by, we hope to assist these rental clients should they choose to buy a property in the future.

So, without further ado, let me wish you all a Merry Christmas on behalf of the team here at Javea Home Finders.

¡Feliz Navidad!