Anybody who has at least one of the little blighters will be no stranger to interrupted sleep, the impossibility of keeping a tidy house, the frustration involved when they turn their noses up at food they have always liked in the past and the worry of what they are up to when they are late home. And yet, in front of visitors, your little cherubs are as good as gold.

Anybody who has an animal at home – apart from the variety that live in an aquarium or cage – knows that they are owned, not owners; slaves, not masters.

If your entire house has turned into a scratching post (apart from the scratching post), your clothes are covered in feline or canine hair (white dogs and cats are attracted to black clothes, and vice versa) and you find yourself hanging off the edge of the bed every night and freezing because your four-legged friend has taken up three-quarters of the duvet, it might be time to take Rover or Felix to church to repent of their sins.

The best time to do this is January 17th, during the fiesta of San Antón, when animal lovers bring their bundles of fluff to their nearest place of worship to be blessed.

Expect to hear plenty of hissing, spitting, barking and spine-chilling, deafening howls as you join the procession with your pooch or puss in tow. And that’s just the owners. It’s not exclusively a cat and dog show, though. Farm animals come along, too, as do horses, donkeys, and all manner of caged animals such as hamsters, guinea pigs, and rabbits – and probably quite a large number of iguanas, which are surprisingly popular as pets in this area. Expect to witness horses bolting, dogs bounding off with their owners attached, and escapees of all species. You’ll start to realise how poor old Noah felt.
San Antón is more a celebration for the owners than their animals, though. As with many fiestas in Spain, the original significance, if not actually just an excuse, at least takes a back seat to the partying, drinking, feasting and fireworks. Depending on where you live, you could see bands playing, fires burning and be invited to tuck into a banquet of open-air flame-grilled grub washed down with plenty of alcohol in plastic cups before being dragged onto a dance-floor kicking and screaming.

In smaller villages, a huge bonfire is often built in the main square on the night before, or the weekend that falls directly before or after January 17th (whichever is nearer the date) and in others, each different neighbourhood or street has their own bonfire as well as or instead of the public one.

A small village of just 200 inhabitants in the Comunidad Valenciana that borders onto Teruel (Aragón) and Cuenca (Castilla-La Mancha) has a bonfire on every street corner and cooks potatoes, chicken and red meat on it, accompanied by bread, all i oli and the ever-present wine, beer and anis. All those living near the site of the bonfire muck in, collecting firewood, buying, cooking and serving food and donating everything from pasting tables to knives and forks, before they all sit down together and tuck in. It doesn’t matter if you never speak to your neighbours the rest of the year, or the only words exchanged are heated ones relating to their loud music or your barbecue smoke ruining their white washing on the line – for one night of the year, the peace is made, a truce is called, and these warring neighbours cook, eat, get drunk and dance together at the disco in the Hogar de Pensionistas (a cross between a community hall and OAPs’ drop-in centre) or to one of the live bands in the church square. Brass bands also parade through the streets, heading up a torchlight procession.

A similar event takes place in Alpujarra, Granada, where the fires – which they dance around – are known as chiscos. On the day of 17th, they kill the fattened pig and feast on it, a tradition popular in Torvizcón, also in Granada. However, it does seem cruelly ironic that they celebrate by killing an animal on the same day that they are traditionally blessed.

Larger towns that are less close-knit tend to celebrate San Antón more publicly, perhaps with live concerts or outdoor paellas, whilst some barely mark the date at all. In the province of Valencia, in Beniopa, near Gandia, and Canals, near Xàtiva, a huge bonfire in the centre of the village draws inhabitants to warm their hands on it. The one in Canals is reputed to be the largest in the world. Later, the festeros travel around the town on horseback handing out toys and other gifts to the children.

In Navalvillar de Pela, in Badajoz (Extremadura), a horse-back procession rides through the town paying homage to the patron, known as the Carrera de San Antón and also the Fiesta de la Encamisá.

Particularly in the Comunidad Valenciana, the San Antón fiesta may be marked by the selling of dried fruit, known as the porrat de Sant Antón, on open-air stalls, and is often the start of ‘Mediaeval market season’ where Moorish-themed craft markets take place each weekend in a different town throughout the region. This year, the first of the Mediaeval markets is held on the weekend of January 13th and 14th in Oliva, Valencia.

Why bonfires and animal-blessings?
Quite how the life of this 105-year-old hermit led to iguanas in church, warring neighbours dancing the can-can after too much San Miguel and paper plates piled with char-grilled chicken remains a bit of a mystery and, as always, the legend has only precarious links to the modern-day celebrations. Stranger still is the fact that the event is so popular in Spain when, in fact, Saint Anthony was Egyptian.

Known here as San Antonio Abad (abad meaning ‘abbott’), he was a Christian monk born in 251 A.D. in Heraclea, High (southern) Egypt and died in 356 A.D., leading an isolated existence in the desert near the Red Sea after selling all his possessions and giving the money to the poor, and founding numerous monks’ fraternities in the country.

Indeed, he is thought to be the founder member of all of those in existence today and, despite his self-imposed exile from the human race, was said to be a charismatic person who had numerous disciples.

San Antonio is credited with being the patron saint of amputees, basket-weavers, brush-makers, hermits, monks, burial workers, animals and all sufferers of epilepsy and skin disorders, particularly eczema.

The basket-weavers’ and brush-makers’ connection is possibly partly to do with the fact that he is said to have miraculously cured an epidemic of Ergot disease – a type of fungus that grows on cereal crops and one of the ingredients in magic mushrooms. For this reason, the disease became known as the ‘fire of Saint Anthony’, hence the bonfires.

The animal significance is that, according to legend, San Antonio was approached by a wild boar with her piglets in tow, all of whom were blind, begging him for help. He performed a miracle curing the piglets of their blindness and, since then, their mother never left San Antonio’s side, but acted as his bodyguard, fending off forces of evil, protecting him from danger and defending him from his enemies. Some said, however, that the wild boar was the devil in disguise who had attempted to tempt him in the desert – but failed, because San Antonio had been able to domesticate him and keep him as a pet.

Whilst it is not recommended keeping wild boar as pets, if you think your own domestic animals could benefit from being blessed, check with your local tourist office when the service is and what else is going on in your town this week to mark San Antón.

However, whilst the patron may have performed a few miracles in his day, don’t expect his influence this week to stop pooches and pusses from playing football with expensive ornaments, climbing curtains or sitting on your copy of thinkSPAINtoday while you’re reading it – that really would try the patience of a saint.