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Friday, 15 August 2008

More surrealism in Barlovento

Man with a live parrot at the petrol station
Customer at Barlovento petrol station. Photo: Theresa

My friends from Franceses stopped off at Barlovento petrol station, and saw this man chatting to another customer. Yes, that's a live parrot on his shoulder.

Mind you, there used to be quite a lot of pirates around La Palma.

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Monday, 11 August 2008

Photos of the Battle of Lepanto

Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

Yup, it's silly.

The original battle involved something like 80,000 men, which is almost the population of the whole island. So I was expecting a cut-down version. Heck, Shakespeare did battles by having one man come on stage and say, "Imagine the battle..."

So Barlovento had a rather good toy castle with about 12 visible defenders, and the sultan gave a speech about the original battle. Then a ship came up behind the castle. At this point I realised that I was in the wrong position to see the naval battle, but I got to see the sails of the two ships waving over the tree tops.

Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

They had lots of dramatic bangs which threw dust up into the air - I think they must have buried explosives in advance.

Eventually, of course, they Christians won, and took all the Muslims prisoner.
Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

They had a brief pause to wash the dirt out of their mouths, so I went around the back.
Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

At that point, I finally got a good look at the Christian ship.
Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

Then the victors marched their prisoners into the village.

Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

(I'm sure it's against the Geneva Convention to force a prisoner along with a pike when he's already got a sword stuck through him.)
Recreation of the Battle of Lepanto in Barlovento, La Palma.

They took the prisoners to the church, where, surprise, surprise, they all converted to Christianity - politically correct NOT! But then I'm sure that somewhere there's an equivalent Muslim fiesta which ends with all the Christians converting to Islam.

Altogether, a rather good laugh.

Of course the fiesta carried on with music in the plaza and dancing long into the night, but I went home.

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