San Xoán

Every year, on the night of June 23rd and coinciding with the summer solstice, one of the most beautiful collective rituals preserved in Galicia is celebrated: the festivity of San Xoán (Saint John) on the croa (the upper part or acropolis) of the Castrolandín hillfort.

This celebration was revived in 2001 by the Association of Friends of the Castros (Asociación de Amigos dos Castros) during the ethnographic research work on the site, prior to the archaeological excavations.

Preserved in ancestral memory, this tradition, which dates back to very remote times, was maintained until the Spanish Civil War, after which its celebration was prohibited.

SAN XOAN 2
People enjoying the magical night in front of the San Xoán bonfire at Castrolandín.
SAN XOAN 1

San Xoán 2001 Poster

The revival of this festivity is sought by respecting its true meaning, as transmitted by the local elders. Thus, the main torch is lit in the form of a bonfire in the centre of the hillfort’s plain; when its brightness and heat diminish, attendees approach to collect its fire in wooden torches (hachones de palo) smeared with grease, and carry them to each of the seven pine cones hanging from the fifty-two willow branches distributed along the entire perimeter of the hillfort’s wall, creating a circle of fire and a unique atmosphere, with the sensation that something remote and ancestral emerges with this ring of light filling the night landscape of the Cuntis valley on that summer night.

According to Xurxo Ayán, archaeologist and researcher directly involved with the Site, there are three symbolic aspects to the celebration of this San Xoán bonfire:

On the one hand, like in the rest of the country, it fulfills a function as a propitiatory and purifying ritual. This area also presents the peculiarity that women of childbearing age jump over the bonfire to favor their chances of having offspring.

On the other hand, celebrating the bonfire on an elevated high point serves as an element of self-affirmation for the village against its neighbours, as the fire can be seen from further away.

Finally, the festival has a function of Christianizing a place that would function as a meeting point between the everyday world of the locals and the hidden world of the mouros who, according to tradition, and also at Castrolandín, live beneath the earth of the walled enclosure.