San Sebastian Firework competition (Basque Country – Spain)

During the week of the 15th of August, the Virgin’s Day, this festivity is held combining the International Firework Competition right in the middle of La Concha Bay.

The traditional cannon shot fired is the starting point of the festivity and takes place at the Alderdi Eder gardens at 19.00 hours

One of the most important elements of the Semana Grande is, without a doubt, the International Fireworks Contest, which includes the participation of companies from different parts of the world.

Also, music has an important place in the festival. Great musical stars gather in the capital of Gipuzkoa.

As far as sports is concerned, it is worth mentioning the classic swimming crossing from Getaria to San Sebastian, horse races, the beach-volleyball tournament and «herri-kirolak» exhibitions (Basque rural sports).

Furthermore, and like in previous years, children will have at their disposal workshops, games, gigantes and cabezudos parades, disco, toros de fuego (fire bulls), and so on.

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Schottisch in Madrid (Spain)

Chotis is a music and dance originating in Bohemia. Its name derives from the German term Schottisch («Scottish»), a Central European social dance to which in Vienna was wanted to attribute origin in a Scottish dance. Several variants of the schottisch survive in the Argentine tradition (schotis), Austrian, Brazilian (xote), Scandinavian (schottis), Spanish, Finnish (Sottiisi), French (Scottish), Italian (chotis), English (scottische), Mexican ), Paraguayan, Portuguese (choutiça or choke), Swiss and Uruguayan. It became fashionable in most of Europe during the nineteenth century and spread to America.

Madrid Chotis
The chotis arrived in the Spanish capital in 1850 and it was reported that the first night was danced in the Royal Palace on the night of November 3 of that year, under the name of Polca Alemana. Popular and dance castizo by antonomasia of the town of Madrid.

It dances in couple face to face, to the sound of a organillo, note 1 and during the dance the woman revolves around the man, who in turn turns on its own axis, hence the popular saying that » It does not take more than a tile «to dance it. It is typical to see him dance, in the summer festivals of Madrid: the women dressed in a Manila shawl and half-head covering, and the men, always looking at the front and dressed in vest, striped pants and a visor or visor.

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tram 28 of Lisbon (Portugal)

Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and the most populous city in the country. It has a population of 547,733 inhabitants within their administrative boundaries. In Lisbon Metropolitan Area, reside 2,821,697 people (2011) and is therefore the largest and most populous metropolitan area in the country. Lisbon is the political center of Portugal, seat of government and residence of the head of state. It is the «beacon of Lusophone» (Daus): the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) has its headquarters in the city. It is also the capital further to the west of the European continent on the Atlantic coast.

The administrative status of the city was originally granted by the dictator Julius Caesar as a Roman municipality. The emperor proudly added the word «Olisipo» which gave rise to the name of Lisbon, the designation «Happiness Julia» (Felicitas Julia), in his memory.

Lisbon is considered as a global city because of its importance in financial, commercial, media, artistic, educational and tourism. It is one of the main economic centers of Europe, thanks to a growing financial progress favored by the largest port containers from the Atlantic coast of Europe and more recently by Humberto Delgado Airport, which receives more than 20 million passengers annually (2015). Lisbon has a network of motorways and high-speed rail system (Alfa Pendular) linking the main Portuguese cities to the capital. The city is the most visited seventh Southern Europe, after Istanbul, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Athens and Milan, with 1.74 million tourists in 2009, and in 2014 exceeded the mark of 3.35 million. Globally, Lisbon was the 35th city with tourist destination in 2015, about 4 million visitors. In 2015, it was considered the 11th most popular tourist city, ahead of Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and Barcelona.

The Lisbon region is the richest country with a GDP PPP per capita of 26,100 euros (4.7% higher than the average GDP per capita of the European Union). Its metropolitan area is the twenty richest continent with a GDP-PPP worth 58 billion euros, equivalent to about 35% of GDP-PPP whole country. Lisbon ranks 122. th place among the cities with higher gross revenues of the world. most of the seats of multinationals in Portugal are in the region of Lisbon, the ninth city in the world with the highest number of international conferences.

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Skyline timelapse in Vicenza

Vicenza, (Vicensa) in the Veneto, is an Italian town of 112,953 inhabitants, capital of the province in Veneto. The metropolitan area of the city, identified with the methodology of the Functional Urban Regions, counts 287,246 inhabitants.

It is the fourth municipality in the region by population and the fifth most densely populated.

The capital is berico destination for cultural tourism with visitors from all over Italy and international, by virtue of his being dubbed «the city of Palladio» – named after the architect who created here a number of buildings in the late Renaissance. Just because the city is an exceptional artistic achievement for the many architectural contributions from Andrea Palladio, Vicenza has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The city is among the most important Italian industrial and economic centers, with a high per capita income as well as the heart of a province dotted with small and medium-sized enterprises whose production records for years third place in Italy in terms of turnover in exports, driven mainly by engineering industry, textile and goldsmith. The latter reached in berico capital over a third of total exports of gold, making Vicenza the Italian capital of gold processing.

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how Murano glass is made

Venice in pre-Roman times [Venice did not exist in pre-Roman times: it was founded in 420 A.D.] represented, in the Upper Adriatic area, the culmination of all the maritime trade with the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Of all the goods arrived from the East, glass enjoyed a representative role. As evidence of this through excavations carried out for the remediation of historic buildings [where?], Have been found in it housing facilities from the Roman era, so officially it was thought that the city of Venice had been incurred by deserters of the Roman city to find refuge from the barbarians.

From this we can deduce that the glass Venetian art comes directly from Roman and Northern Adriatic, however, the real development occurred in the Middle Ages, where art and craft were further enhanced [citation needed] . The Venetian glassmakers began to practice this art inheriting the use of glass by sodium Eastern. Such a composition is suitable for hot work and in this cleverly distinguished for the aesthetic taste and the use of more colors. The aesthetic capacity for Venetian is based on the intuition that the glass is a highly malleable material and thus suitable for being blown and shaped in incandescent state, but able to maintain the same color characteristics even in the finished product. This differs from the Nordic tradition, which holds that the glass is the equivalent of the hard stone and then that the skill lies in valuing the objects through the cut. The first documents that come to us on the art Venetian glassmaking dates back to 982 AD, the year in which it appears the name of a craftsman glassmaker in Venice, so we can assume that this art, which is still active, is more than a thousand worldwide . After 982 there was confirmation of the existence of other Venetian glass, but in the thirteenth century the dominance turned sharply of Murano artisans. This was due to the fact that the glassworks focused course on the island of Murano, so much so that in 1291 the state established the destruction of glassware made in Murano in Venice deputandone the historical origin, so much so that these days some dynasties today glassworks have produced their activities without interruption.

It is believed that the glass factory in Murano originated in the eighth century [citation needed], with significant Asian and Arabic influences, as Venice was a major trading port. The fame of Murano like glass processing center was born when the Venetian Republic, to prevent the burning of the buildings of the city (then largely built of wood), ordered glassmakers to move their foundries to Murano in 1291 and the first sprang up in the popular rio of Glaziers. [citation needed]

Unlike other countries where the glassworks stood in production sites of raw materials or fuel, Venice and Murano have always imported all materials such as silicon glazing, the dark sodas and other, from far away places, including firewood, fuel up the last century, which came from Istrian and Dalmatian coasts. The true quality of the island of Murano, though, was the man with his experience, which over time has perfected the styles, quality and the ability to shape the hot glass. These glass artists have always been contacted since the Renaissance to bring in the courts and in the shops of their skills, becoming masters. In fact, for this reason, in Murano glass he was activated a school that initiated young people to this profession even if the experience in glassworks remained unique. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Murano glass was required by the upper classes of Europe, starting from the invention of glass in 1450; In fact, the crystal is a glass quality that differs and that gives the same glass of the peculiar characteristics due to the same base of silicon but in a higher percentage of lead oxide (24%), for which the products created were particularly refined to meet the demand for extremely wealthy clients. In the Baroque period the research was transformed through the execution of effect objects such as roes, or compositions containing silicates, tin and lead with white appearance milk from which the etymology, which approached perfectly to the furniture of the eighteenth century Venice also in ‘decadent era of the Venetian Republic. After the end of the Republic of San Marco in 1797 the glass handicraft revival happened in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the glassworks that were born still worked out techniques in use and which gave rise to the contemporary glass and design.

The glassmakers of Murano class soon became the most prominent on the island: in fact, from the fourteenth century, glassmakers were allowed to wear swords, enjoyed immunity from prosecution by the Venetian state and their daughters were allowed to marry with the most wealthy families of Venice. However glassmakers were never allowed to leave the Republic. Many craftsmen took the risk to plant the processing furnaces in nearby cities or in distant countries like England and the Netherlands. At the end of the sixteenth century, three thousand seven thousand inhabitants on the island of Murano were involved in some way in the glass industry. For several centuries, the glassmakers of Murano maintained a monopoly on the quality of the glass, on the development or improvement of techniques, including those of crystalline glass, enameled glass, glass with threads of gold (aventurine), the multicolored glass (millefiori ), the glass-milk (milk glass) and precious stones in glass imitated. Today, the artisans of Murano are still employing these century-old techniques, in every processing: from contemporary art glass to glass figurines Murano, to the chandeliers and wine stoppers. Today, Murano is home to a vast number of factories and workshops-studies of individual artists who create all sorts of glassware both for mass market for both original sculptures.

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