Deep in France's Languedoc region, a festival marked by fervour and bullfights has just begun. Michael Foley traces Beziers's Spanishroots.

Over the next week, 30 bulls will die at the arena in Beziers. Over the same time, up to one million people will listen to and see some of the best flamenco in the world, drink their way through a lake of wine, beer and sangria, eat a mountain of paella and bull stew and dance all night until many of them sleep where they fall.

All very fiery, spirited and Spanish, but Beziers is not in Spain, but southern France, and its feria - a Spanish word - appears totally bizarre in its incongruity. But is it really all that odd that this town in the heart of the Languedoc wine-growing region should feel so at home celebrating in such a Spanish way?

The bull has been part of the culture of this part of southern France for thousands of years. Bulls still roam the Camargue to the east of Beziers and there are even French bullfight schools; a number of the toreadors taking part in the feria are French. Even the flamenco will not be entirely pure Spanish.

Following the Spanish Civil War, refugees crossed the Pyrenees and settled in the south, within sight of Spain.

In Beziers and surrounding areas, a number of flamenco schools cater for families with such names as Gonzales, Mendoza or Rodrigo, because borders are not as tight as some in authority might like and the people in this part of France clearly see themselves as closer in culture and spirit to Spain than to Paris. People have moved backwards and forwards across the border, only an hour and a half to the south.

The feria does not have a long history. It was started within the last 20 years by bullfight impresarios and the festival has grown up around it. In ways it is like the Edinburgh Festival, where the fringe has become bigger and better known than the official festival. In Beziers, the music, the dancing in the street and the drinking have become the main reasons for the festival.

From this week until the early hours of next Monday, Beziers will not be for the faint-hearted. Given the heat of the day, most of the events take place in the evening and at night, allowing people time to sleep off the excesses of one night and be ready for the next.

Excessive it can be. One morning a few years ago, a young man and a woman were seen slumped across a table outside a café. As they were woken by the massive street-cleaning operation they raised their heads, stared at the day and proceeded to finish the bottle of wine left on the table a few hours earlier. On another occasion, a group of men found a hosepipe in the covered market in the centre of the town, they took off all their clothes and hosed each other down before hitting the feria again.

The earliest events are at about 6 p.m., but in reality no one bothers getting up before about 7 p.m., ready for dinner on the streets, following by free music or dancing at one of the many bodegas selling drink and playing loud music. Later, bands play on the streets or the more serious-minded attend the midnight flamenco sessions in the cloisters of the Cathedral of St Nazaire.

The feria has another function, other than generating huge revenue - last year Beziers earned more than €76 million - that of emphasising difference. People in Languedoc know their region might not have been part of France at all and that the fact they are French is due to the crusade against the 12th-century heresy, the Cathars, when northern knights thundered down to wreak havoc and eventually annex this land for the kings of France. Beziers was sacked in 1209 and 20,000 inhabitants killed.

Today the people of Languedoc still speak a strange French full of twangy sounds, such as veng for vin (wine) and demang for demain (tomorrow), which they say is the sound of the old Occitan language coming through, a language closer to Catalan than to French. Differences are also evident in the passion for rugby, which is also part of the feria - it is hoped Keith Wood will appear with his club Harlequins in the battle for the wonderfully named Bacchus Cup.

A red neckerchief, like those worn at the feria in Pamplona, is practically compulsory, the difference here though is they are decorated with the 12-pointed Cathar cross.

The feria is a reminder that this region might be politically part of France but that culturally it is part of a wider Mediterranean world. That is what will be celebrated in a very unFrench way with bullfighting, singing and dancing in the street, midnight flamenco sessions, and, of course, wine.