La Palma's Embroidery Museum

The table cloth on the stairs

La Palma has a long tradition of gorgeous embroidery. As I mentioned in my previous post, the embroidery museum is upstairs in the Red House, in Mazo. This gorgeous tablecloth in broderie anglaise is halfway up the stairs.

Assisi embroidery, a form of cross stitch. About the only thing in the museum I could see myself making.

Now I'm fairly good at cross stitch, but the stuff in here is waaaaaaaaaaay out of my league. For one thing, it's not done on aida cloth, which makes it obvious where the stitches go. This is all on fine cotton or silk, or occasionally linen.

Broderie Anglaise

The commonest kinds of embroidery here are satin stich (bordado indefinido) , and a variation of broderie anglaise called rechi or richelieu.

A fish in satin stitch

In the days before modern embroidery kits, pattens were copied onto tissue paper, and the lines marked out with lots of tiny pinholes. Then the tissue paper was laid onto the cloth, and blue dye ironed over it, so that the dye went through the pinhole and onto the fabric.

How to transfer a pattern to the cloth

A lot of the embroidery is so fine, I think you'd need young eyes and daylight to do it. So you'd spend years learning to work to that amazing standard, and then you'd have to give up by the age of forty.

Fine satin stitch on a cuff


You know, I have mixed feeling about it. These are real works of art, and I'm always glad to see beauty created. But the vast majority of it was only created because some people could afford to buy a year of someone else's time. For example, these embroidered sheets and pillow case for a cradle are absolutely beautiful, but it's really not practical. I don't want to get too graphic here, but 19th century nappies can't have been leak-proof, and babies' cute little faces aren't leak-proof either. Much as I coo over tiny people, I wouldn't put one down on embroidered silk.

A cradle full of embroidered silk.

And this towel is far too lovely to dry your behind on, unless you were fairly contemptuous of the person who made it.

Satin stitch towel. Imagine drying your bum on that!

The museum is signposted from the main road through Mazo, and in any case, it's a pretty distinctive building. It costs 2€ to get in (1.50€ for residents) for both the embroidery museum and the Corpus Christi museum. It's open from 10 am to 2 pm Monday to Friday, and 11 am - 6 pm on Saturdays. Phone 922 428 587


Satin stitch on a priest's vestments

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The Red House in Mazo

The Red House, Mazo

La Palma's embroidery museum is upstairs in the Red House in Mazo. (I'll write about that in my next post.) Downstairs is a museum about the fiesta of Corpus Christi in Mazo. If you're on La Palma for June 3rd next year, for goodness' sake go and see it. If not, I strongly recommend the museum.


Some of the things used to make the Corpus Christi archways, and a block for chopping them up.

The fiesta is in honour of the Eucharist -- the body of Christ. Every year since the 1950s, they've decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers, seeds and leaves, and small parts of these archways are in the museum. Well, when I say "small", they're a small percentage of the whole. The cross below is about four feet high, but the biggest archway is about ten metres (33ft) high.


Corpus Christi Cross

And below, you can see the details of the cross. It makes me wonder how many hours it took to do the whole thing.

Detail of the cross

The museum is signposted from the main road through Mazo, and in any case, it's a pretty distinctive building. It costs 2€ to get in (1.50€ for residents) and it's open from 10 am to 2 pm Monday to Friday, and 11 am - 6 pm on Saturdays. Phone 922 428 587

A fish used to decorate an archway.

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San Martin

While most of Europe celebrates Remembrance Day, here it's St. Martin's Day - San Martin. (Spain was officially neutral in both world wars, so they don't have a Remembrance Day).

San Martin is traditionally when the chestnuts are ready to pick, and the new wine from the summer's grape harvest is ready to drink. (Although with global warming, the chestnuts have been in the shops for weeks.) So most families go off to the bodega (wine store) for a wine-and-chestnuts party. The more traditional ones blow conchs.

On Saturday they were handing out free wine and roasted chestnuts at Mazo market. Delicious!

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The Molino Museum

A collection of old weights

As well as the workshop making replica ceramics, the windmill at Mazo houses a small museum. Entry is free, but there are a couple of places you can make a donation. Upstairs is mostly a collection of old tools: an old Singer sewing machine, combs for flax, knife grinders, braziers...


Oil lamps

... the millers glasses, shepherd's poles, long handled pallets for putting bread in a large oven. To be honest, it's all crammed in rather haphazardly, but it's almost all labelled, and it's rather fun.



But the best bit is downstairs. Much of the bottom of the windmill is still there. You can see the main flywheel and the gears, and hoppers for the grain.



Best of all, you can still turn some of the mechanism by hand. Of course young boys love this.


The brake and the bread kneader

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Pre-hispanic Ceramics

Inside the workshop at El Molino

The Benahoaritas (or Auaritas or Awaras) were the people who lived on La Palma before the Spanish invasion. They lived in caves and wore animal skins, but they farmed, and they had ceramics. The older ceramics are simpler, and the newer ones usually more decorated.

At El Molino, in Mazo, they make replicas of these ceramics. The business was started by Ramon and Vina, but these days they have other people working there too.


Cutting the design into the clay

Each design -- usually a bowl -- is an exact copy of a object made before the Spanish invasion in 1492. The walls of the workshop are lined with the reference pieces, each one labelled with the place where the original was found. The finished items are for sale in the shop, and prices range from €12 to €200. They also sell souvenirs.


Smoothing the bowl with a pebble.

The workshop is in an old windmill. To get there, take the road from Santa Cruz to Fuencaliente which passes below Mazo, and look out for the signs and the windmill's sails. The windmill also houses a small museum (more in another post) and it's set in a beautiful garden.

Open Monday to Saturday, 9 am to 1 pm and 3 pm to 7 pm. Tel 922 440213

The web site is listed as http://www.ceramicaelmolino.com, but it isn't up at the time of writing.


The kiln at el Molino where the finished pieces are fired.

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Yippee! The Fire's Under Control

The island government has just announced that the fire's under control.

"Under control" isn't quite the same as "out". It means the mountainside is still smouldering, and they have to put out the embers before the wind gets up. But with this weather, it really ought to be ok.

And apologies of you tried to access this site yesterday evening. The domain providers in the USA had a power cut which took out all their servers. As you can see, it's all up and running again.

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La Palma's still burning

Helicopter dropping water on the fire at Tigalate, on La Palma

The fire on La Palma is still burning, but it's a lot smaller, and a lot farther up the mountain and away from houses. Hopefully, now that all the helicopters and both planes are dumping water on the same place, it'll be sorted out soon.


Smouldering forest, Mazo, La Palma

Meanwhile there are acres and acres of smouldering forest, and people trying to get the fire completely out.


Mop up operations in Fuencaliente, La Palma

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The eastern fire just north of Tigalate, La Palma

The fire on the east of La Palma has almost gone around in a circle. I took these pictures just north of Tigalate.

The second one shows one of the amphibious planes from Seville in action. I believe they hold 4,500 litres of water at one go.



Amphibious fire-fighting plane at Tigalate, La Palma

I have no more news from the west of the island, but when I went to Tigalate, the temperature was 32ªc and gust of a stiff breeze. This isn't good weather for fire-fighting, but it's miles better than yesterday's 40ºC and gust of up to 70 km/h.

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Update on the Fire

The fire started at Tigalate, and the main area of concern is currently between Santa Cecilia and Jeday

Well I got one thing wrong in the last post. There was a light breeze here, but up on the ridge where they were fighting the fire, it was blowing a gale up to 65 km/h - exactly the worst sort of weather for fire-fighting.

However, I was right that the Princess Hotel and Cancajos are safe. In fact that's where they took the evacuees. About 100 are still in the Princess, and 115 in the army barracks at Cancajos. The rest are staying with friends and family.

So far, about 1,500 hectares have been burnt - mostly pine forest. If you were planning on walking or mountain biking in the south of the island - well it won't be so pretty (although it will recover). So far, the north of the island is fine.

And now the good news. The wind has dropped, and the weather forecast is for the temperatures to drop 10-15ºC within 24-48 hours. At the moment, they're trying to use the lava flows at Jeday and Pista de Los Cabritos as natural fire breaks, and to hold it there, or at least have a much smaller front to the fire. We now have helicopters from Tenerife and Gran Canaria helping out, and two planes are on their way from the mainland.

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Corpus in Mazo - Photos of this year

Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) is a big festival in Mazo. They decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers, seeds and leaves.




People collect the materials and work on intensively the pieces a couple of weeks in advance, but the archways are erected a Wednesday night. But they had a problem with the crane, and they were still putting up the last of them when I arrived on Thursday morning.


The largest archway is always in the square near the top of the street, and I found it still laid out on trestles, waiting for assembly. This meant that I could get close-up shots of things which would later be ten metres (33ft) up in the air.




The carpets beneath the archways are made using things rather like wrought iron gates, as stencils. They lay the "gate" down on the sand, fill the sections with petals or whatever, squirt with water-with-a-bit-of-glue-in-it, and lift the gate up again.



Each archway includes a small altar. I've been photographing them for years without really wondering why they were there.


This year I finally got to seed the procession, and it became clear. The fiesta is in honour of the body of Christ.


During a normal Catholic mass, this is put into a special vessel called a monstrance.
In this procession, the priest walks on the flower carpets carrying the monstrance: everybody else walks along the sides. As the priest reaches each archway, he places the monstrance on the little altar, kneels, and wafts incense towards it.


The main feast day is ten weeks after Maundy Thursday, so this year it was on the 11th of June. If you're impressed enough to book a holiday to see next year's Corpus Christi, it'll be on June 3rd.

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Belmaco Cave

Belmaco cave, Mazo

Before the Spanish invasion, Belmaco Cave was the home of the kings of Mazo. The first rock carvings were found in the 18th century, which was the start of archaeology in the Canary Islands. Today, it's open to the public. The entrance where you pay (€1.50 for a resident adult) is also a handicraft shop. A little farther inside, there's a small, two-story building housing various artefacts, like shell spoons and bone punches, and lots of ceramics. Ceramics survive better than leather work, after all.


Benahorita artefacts, Belmaco museum

After that you follow the path under the road to the main cave, with its rock carvings. By the way, that little square construction inside the cave is much more recent. It's an oven for drying figs.

There's a path around the site, with nine more small caves and display boards explaining things like which kind of tree is in front of you, and what it used to be used for. It's a nice stroll of about a kilometre, but in some places the paths are steep and rough, so it's not suitable if you have serious trouble walking.

There's a legend associated with the cave. The old canton of Tigalate (now Mazo) was ruled by two brothers, Juguiro and Garehagua. Their sister, Arecida, was beautiful and charming, and she fell in love with a brave and handsome warrior called Tinamarcín. Of course princesses couldn't usually marry for love, but her brothers thought well of Tinamarcín too, and so they started to prepare for the wedding of the year. All the island's royalty was expected to come.

And then Guillen Peraza arrived at the head of a party of would-be invaders. Luckily for the Benahoita, he was inexperienced, and they drove him off to LA Gomera. Tinamarcín was particularly brave and skilful in the battle, and Arecida loved him more than ever.

But Guillen Peraza came back just a few months later, and this time he brought people from La Gomera and El Hierro with him. They worked as interpreters,and fought alongside the Spanish. One of them, Jacomar from El Hierro, was dazzled by Arecida's beauty. But he was a cruel man, and when he found that she would never give him her love, he tried to take it by force. She resisted him, and he murdered her with his knife.

Tinamarcín swore vengance, but Juguiro and Garehagua got to Jacomar first. They killed him and left his body for the vultures, and Tinamarcín was left with nothing more than memories of his love.

The cave is on the lower road from Mazo towards Fuencaliente, at km 7, near Lomo Oscuro. It opens Monday - Saturday 10:00 am - 18:00 pm and Sundays 10:00 am - 14:00 pm, Tel. / Fax: 922.44.00.90 (but I'm not sure how well they speak English).

They have a website in Spanish here with a map.

Did you know that I have a Google map for La Palma? Go to http://maps.google.com/ and search for "la palma canary islands". So far, I've marked 24 places of interest.


Rock engraving in front of the main cave, Belmaco

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Salemera Beach

Salermera from the road above: the beach is in the inlet at the right.

La Palma has lots of little beaches tucked away here and there, like Salemera. You take the main road from the airport to Fuencaliente, and just south of Mazo, follow the marked turning off. After four twisty kilometres, you wind up at the little village. It's easy to park.

The beach itself is tiny, but very sheltered. You don't have to worry that a big wave will come along and knock your toddlers off their feet. The lighthouse (built in 1992) is called "White sands lighthouse" (Faro de arenas blancas), but in this case, white is relative. To me, it looks like the same black, volcanic sand you get everywhere on the island, with perhaps 5% smashed shells.



I don't think many people live their permanently. Most of the houses look like beach huts, but there is a small café, with a kids' slide, open from Wednesdays to Mondays, noon to half-past ten (ten on Sundays).

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Corpus Christi in Mazo

Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) is a big festival in Mazo. They decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers and seeds.


The main feast day is ten weeks after Maundy Thursday, so this year it's very early. (In 2009 it will be on the 11th of June).


People collect the materials and work on the pieces pretty much all year, but it all comes together on a Wednesday night, so Thursday morning is the best time to see the archways.



If you can't see them then, they stay up until Sunday.

The church of San Blas, at the bottom of the hill, gets decorated too. It's a rather unusual church in that it has three naves.



And the flowers inside are wonderful. If you get there, check out the ceiling over the altar, too.



This is the 50th anniversary of the fiesta in its current form.





The carpets beneath the archways are made using things rather like wrought iron gates, as stencils. They lay the "gate" down on the sand, fill the sections with petals or whatever, squirt with water-with-a-bit-of-glue-in-it, and lift the gate up again.

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