Tuna Fest

Last weekend (the weekend of the 7th, not this weekend that just passed), I did pretty much what I do every other weekend. I took a train ride to El Escorial on Saturday, and then a bike ride to Tres Cantos today. The highlight of the weekend, though, was the free entertainment: as I was walking home on Friday evening, there was a tuna leaving the Plaza Mayor. A tuna is a band, traditionally affiliated with a facultad (college/division) of a university . It consists of a big handful of folks, and they play guitars, lutes, ukuleles, tambourines, and occasionally, accordions (and I saw one with a standup bass, but I think that that's an exception.)




Think of it as a musical fraternity with a penchant for early modern dress.


The ones that I saw were from the facultades of derecho--schools of law--from all over Spain, and they were having a contest on Saturday evening, so after having gotten back from El Escorial, I went and saw a part of it, and then I went to a party that a friend of Misty Carter (from Emory, and who I've run into twice in Madrid) was throwing.

This post was originally going to be longer, but then I realized that I haven't posted anything in over a week! So, I will discuss El Escorial in another post. Oh, and churros. Delicious, delicious churros.