La izada del pino por los quintos.

The raising of the pine by those coming of age. Well more or less. Raising the pine certainly. Quintos were originally the group of young men who had reached the age when they would be conscripted into the army so I suppose it has that idea of a group of classmates, of those leaving school or something similar nowadays.

I'd seen the poster advertising the event as part of the fiesta in Peñaparda so I asked a Spanish pal what it meant. She described young men attempting to climb a greasy pole to retrieve a "Kewpie Doll."

What actually happened was that when we got there a long, trimmed pine tree was lying in the middle of the village street. All 433 inhabitants seemed to be there to watch. A young woman gave us a bottle of beer. Then a telescopic handler bumped the tree around till the base was close to a deep hole that they had dug in the street. With a lot of tugging and cursing the tree was manoeuvered into the hole and raised by a mixture of the handler and people pulling on ropes. The tree was wedged into place and then a bunch of people shinned up it.

It must have been backbreaking work before chainsaws and telescopic handlers.

We noticed that lots of young women were wearing their Quintos (modernised as Kintos) T-shirts but it was only the lads and one grey haired bloke who climbed the tree.