Santa Águeda

February 5 is the feast-day of Santa Águeda, a martyred Italian saint from the third century, and apparently patron saint of married and breast-feeding women (because as part of her torture Águeda had her breasts cut off.) Groups of children (in the morning), and adults (in the evening), go around in traditional Basque dress singing songs specific to the occasion. The choirs stand in the round and pound sticks on the ground to keep time as they sing. You can listen to audio and read the words to the songs in Basque and Spanish here. As accompanies the majority of traditional festivities in the Bilbao, there is some drinking and general carousing in the Casco Viejo of Bilbao tonight after the groups have finished singing.

Santa Águeda is nothing major; apart from school kids that visit the neighbourhood old folks' homes, only choirs or groups of friends that like to sing take part. But having my otherwise routine evening interrupted by singing on the street below my building was a pleasant surprise.
One of the most interesting parts of living in the Basque Country is observing how people relate to their roots and how seemingly every couple of weeks I get to be part of a different tradition.