At midnight on 20 January the flag of San Sebastián is raised in the Plaza de la Constitución and the city begins to drum. Around 150 companies — some fifteen thousand drummers in total — march through the streets for twenty-four hours, half in nineteenth-century French military uniform, half dressed as cooks beating wooden barrels with sticks. At midnight on the twenty-first the flag comes down and it stops.
The origin is a parody of the Napoleonic garrison, mocked by water-carriers at the fountains, and the cook's apron is the mockery made permanent.
No attendance figure is published.
The date is fixed at 20 January. Donostia in January is cold, wet and completely full; the drumming is continuous and audible everywhere, and a hotel room in the old town is not a place to sleep that night.
PlanningFixed on 20 January, from the midnight flag-raising to the midnight lowering — the city does not sleep.