Summer solstice fires of the Pyrenees

Fire brought down from the mountain

On the night when the sun stands highest, communities on both sides of the Pyrenees climb up, light torches, and carry them down to set light to a beacon built in the traditional way of the place. UNESCO inscribed the practice on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2015, in a single file shared by France, Spain — Aragon, Catalonia and the Val d'Aran — and Andorra.

The descent is led by the young. UNESCO's text is explicit that the night marks the passage from adolescence to adulthood: the torch-bearers are the young people of the village, and in many places unmarried young women wait for them with wine and sweet pastries. Who lights the first beacon depends on the local custom — the mayor, the priest, or the men married most recently that year. Families pass the practice on, supported by a network of local associations.

The brandon of Luchon

In France the best-kept of these fires is the brandon of Bagnères-de-Luchon, in the Haute-Garonne, and of the villages of its canton. Brandon means a green branch; in Occitan it is pronounced brandou. The beacon is a fir ten to twelve metres long, split along its length and around its circumference with iron wedges; wooden wedges hold the splits open, iron rings keep the trunk from breaking apart, and the gaps are packed with shavings and straw. It is raised upright, and the mayor and the priest light it together.

The procession that brings the fire is led by the associations of the town: the municipal band, founded in 1875, the folklore group Les Fils de Luchon, founded in 1934, and the company of mounted guides, with dancers in old costume carrying flowers and small torches. The trunk burns for close to an hour before it falls. Then the young men run in to snatch brands from the embers and whirl them, chasing the young women with the smoke and the soot, while the older people collect pieces of the cooled wood: a charred piece carried home is said to bring the household luck for the year.

Not one night but several

The old date is the eve of Saint John, 23 June, with a second fire in some places at Saint Peter's day on 29 June. In practice the calendar is local. Luchon holds its brandon on a Saturday close to the solstice — in 2026 that was 20 June — on the esplanade of the thermal park, and eight neighbouring villages light their own on later evenings, so that the fires run on through the end of June and into July. There is no central programme. The valley's tourist office publishes the dates each spring, village by village.