Who has not dreamed of traveling back in time? Moving through time has always been an obsession that, for centuries, we have reflected in every manifestation, artistic or not so much, that has been put before us. However, we still haven’t achieved the long-awaited jump from one era to another. Or so I thought.
Until this summer I discovered my mistake in Laredo, a town on the Spanish Cantabrian coast, in which its inhabitants have found the formula to move through the years, although only to jump into the past, for 4 days and at a very specific time, the 60s and 70s of the last century.
They call it “Ye Ye Festival” and have been celebrating it since 2010 as a reminder of a golden age, when the humble fishing village became a musical and cultural vanguard as a result of the invasion of French tourists, who came to enjoy the icy waters of the Cantabrian Sea and the forceful gastronomy of the north of Spain. This rush of tourism brought the 20th century to Laredo and transformed it into the spa town it is today.
During the festival various activities are carried out that take us back to those times of freedom, uncovering and good music, in which Spain opened up to the world after years of iron dictatorship and Francoist censorship. White parties, sports festivals on land and sea, children’s games, lots of music and a flea market with sixties deals and lots of food, including an exhibition of “food trucks”, make Laredo travel for a few hours to the recent past.
But the best of the event, without a doubt, is the Ye Ye parade or party hippyin which everyone in the town, especially the older people, take to the streets dressed in colorful and vintage outfits like real hippies or dressed up as Elvis, many with Afro-style wigs and the most incredible colors, listening to music from the “prodigious” decade and riding around in classic cars and motorcycles with many years and more kilometers on their backs.
It is moving to see the grandmothers —always more daring than the grandfathers— dressed and made up as in their younger years, dancing and singing wildly, giving everything to the rhythm of The Beatles, Formula V, The mamas & the papas, Los Brincos and other Spanish or foreign groups that marked their youth.
Where do they get so many old and colorful clothes? And the huge glasses with the symbol “peace, love and liberty”? And the brightly colored wigs? The miracle of outfits is achieved through retail trade with Asia. Everything you need to look like a real hippy It is found in the Chinese bazaars of the town. The Chinese, millennial merchants who always know what to sell at the right time and place, flood their shops with costumes, wigs and all kinds of bargains during the days leading up to the festival, surely the season when more euros arrive in their happy pockets.
Laredo is a town of grandparents and grandchildren who spend the summer while their parents still work. The Ye Ye tradition, as a manifestation of popular culture, is passing from the oldest to the youngest, who enjoy as much as their grandparents a music that came late to us Cubans, we know why, but that will never go out of style. .
