Ondara has it large with halfyear fiestas

Because summer's too long to wait for street parties, parades and paellas

HAVING to wait a whole year for the big, boozy summer fiestas with their nightly discos and open-air dinners is enough to make any Spaniard fidgety and frustrated – but some Costa towns consider patience overrated as a virtue and give into instant gratification with the ever-popular Mig Any, or 'halfyear' tradition: a scaled-down version of the real thing exactly midway between the last and the next.

A bit like having a 'half-year Christmas Day' on June 25, except less expensive and with more food and alcohol involved.

Ondara is the latest to break up the boredom of 51 localfiesta-free weeks, with its halfyear Sant Jaume patron saint festival exploding onto the streets tomorrow, Saturday 26, in the morning.

It begins at a fairly pedestrian pace, with a bringyour-own-breakfast gathering and the opening of a children's park with a mechanical ride-on rodeo bull at 10.00 in the Plaza del Prado, then quickens up at 13.00 with a parade to music courtesy of the L'Atril marching band between the Social Centre and said Plaza, where paella will be dished up for everyone at 14.00 – get your tickets today at the latest for €4 a head from the Casa de Cultura.

It's about then that it starts to get noisy, thanks to DJ Montaner and his open-air disco to serenade the paellamunching, but it all calms down a bit before the 17.00 handball, or pilota valenciana matches and children's bullson-wheels race.

And the peace and quiet doesn't last for long: cranking up the volume at 18.00, live band No Comment gives a gig in a marquée in the Plaza del Prado, then the party moves onto the club with a night-long music festival courtesy of Màxim Sound and other entertainers.

An outdoor bar will be open all day in the Plaza del Prado with music playing between the acts.

A big thank-you to Saint James, Sant Jaume or San Jaime in all three languages for giving Ondara a great excuse for a fun-packed Saturday.