Quarter III     Moita - Leal Family Reunion


We spent 3 glorious days in Moita with the members of the Leal Family. The only sad thing was that we could not get together all members of the Leal family as we used to in the past.

In these three days, Moita was celebrating its Annual Festival with 4 Street Run-of-the-Bulls, the Fogareiro (Camp Stove) Afternoon and non-ending street parting.

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Moita     The Family Reunion

We arrived at Moita at 9 o’clock on the Friday, just in time for parking the car before they closed the main avenue for the first of the Bull Runs. With all the excitement we forgot to switch off the car parking lights and they stayed on all day and most of the night and flattened the battery!!! We had a bit of trouble next day to find a mechanic to lend us a booster to start the car, as the entire village was still on festive mood.

With my cousins Zé, Jorge and I walked up and down the main street, first dodging the bulls and after soaking the festivities. The ladies decided to watch most of the events from the balcony of Elsa’s apartment.

We went to bed at earlier hours of every morning as the music was blasting from the various bands until 3 o’clock every morning and Elsa’s apartment is right in the main avenue.It was one of the best street parties I have ever seen and together with our family we enjoyed every moment of it and we will not forget it in a hurry.

Although noisy and tumultuous there was not issues with drunkenness, with everyone sharing noisily their happiness.The other outstanding aspect was the organisation of the entire event:

•  Teams of council tradespeople erected and dismounted the barriers that divided the avenue in three bull rings, with lightning speed.

•  Battalions of cleaning gangs inundated the main avenue after the day events and cleaned the street. You can imagine the condition of the street after thousands of people barbecued on the street in their Fogareiros (camp stoves), drank copious amounts of beer and wine and ate their traditional foods.

•  Emergency medical crews attended the slower “would-be-toureiros” that had disagreements with the bulls.

I took thousands of photos and decided to divide these posting in three parts: The family event, the Run of the Bulls and some videos of the festival.

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