Thirty days of June

There are festivals a city hosts and festivals a city becomes. In June, Campina Grande does not make room for São João: it reorganises itself around it. Trading hours change, the accent on the street changes, and the month stops having thirty days and starts having thirty nights.

The Parque do Povo

Everything centres on the Parque do Povo, the ground the city set aside for the festival, which in June works as a city inside the city: stages, quadrilha dancing, a bonfire, corn food and a built village that reconstructs the old countryside. That is where the title Campina Grande carries comes from — the largest São João festival in the world — and the number is not a figure of speech.

The forró that is not on the radio

Anyone arriving expecting the electronic forró of the radio finds something else. Forró pé de serra is made with three instruments and nothing more: accordion, zabumba drum and triangle. It is music for dancing together, not for watching. Whoever has never danced learns in one night, because everyone around is willing to teach.

You do not watch a São João. You step into it.

When to book

Here is the practical part, and the one that catches visitors out: a room in Campina Grande in June is settled months ahead. Decide in May and you decide among what is left. If a June trip is in your head, it belongs in this month's diary.

• The festival fills the whole month, not only the night of the 24th
• The Trem do Forró leaves Campina Grande with the music played on board
• The city stands above five hundred metres: the night genuinely cools
• João Pessoa is about two hours away by road, along the BR-230

GOA Essence CityMix sits minutes from the Parque do Povo. In June that stops being a detail on a map and becomes the difference between walking back and hunting for a car at two in the morning.