Hogueras Week: Keeping Your Alicante Home Secure

The Hogueras de San Juan are Alicante’s biggest fiesta and one of the few declared of International Tourist Interest. For five days, from 20 to 24 June, the city belongs to the monuments, the mascletàs in plaza de los Luceros and the verbenas that run late. At midnight on the 24th the palmera goes up from the castle, and more than ninety hogueras burn across the neighbourhoods.

It is a brilliant week. It is also a week when a lot of homes are empty until three in the morning, and a lot of people come home tired, in a crowd, looking for keys.

Before you go out

• Lock with the key, every time. A door pulled shut on the latch can be slipped in seconds. Two turns of the key are what the lock was designed for.
• Close the terrace door too. Ground floors and first floors with terraces are easier to enter from the back than from the landing.
• Don’t advertise the empty flat. Photos from the mascletà are best posted after you are home.
• Leave a light on a timer rather than all evening.

What to carry

Carry keys somewhere that does not fall out when you sit on a kerb: a zipped pocket, not a back pocket or the top of a bag. Keep a photo of your door and lock on your phone, and the address written down, especially if you are staying in a rented flat for the fiesta and do not know it by heart.

If you lock yourself out in fiesta week

Say where you are and, if a hoguera stands in your street, suggest a corner nearby to meet. Some streets around the monuments are full of people until late, and a clear meeting point saves time for everyone.

Do not accept help from strangers offering to “get you in”. Climbing a balcony after a long night is how fiesta week ends in the emergency department.

Coming home to a problem

If the lock feels different, the key will not go in, or there are marks around the cylinder, do not go in. Call 091 or 112, and let the police look first. Once they have, the door can be made secure the same night.

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