Casa Lujan

Courtyard of Casa Lujan, Puntallana

Casa Lujan is much more fun than you'd expect from the brochures, which describe it as an "ethnographic museum". But it's not a collection of stuff in dusty display cases. It's an 18th century house, with whole rooms restored to show how the comfortably-off lived between about 1920 and 1960. Even better, there are people "living" in the house. And rather than use shop mannequins, the "inhabitants" are giant rag dolls, called mayos because they traditionally make an appearance at Fiesta de la Cruz, in May. So one set of mayos are smoking and playing dominoes in the living room.


Living room of Casa Lujan, Puntallana

While this lady is busy sewing. (I used to have a reconditioned, treadle, Singer sewing machine much like this. I also used to have similar hair and glasses.)


Morning room Casa Lujan, Puntallana

Meanwhile this servant is working in the kitchen


Kitchen of Casa Lujan, Puntallana

In 1919 the local council bought the house to use as a village school until about 1980, and the school room downstairs has been restored too.


The schoolroom, Casa Lujan, Puntallana

It's not just the furniture: they have posters on the walls explaining why you shouldn't go birds'-nesting, notebooks on the desks, and an old set of weights and measures.

Set of measures in the school of Casa Lujan, Puntallana

Open Monday-Saturday 10 am- 1 pm and 4 pm - 7 pm
Google map here. Admission is free, but there's a box for donations in the school room.


School notebook, Casa Lujan, Puntallana

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The Living Statues are Back

Every year Santa Cruz has a demonstration of living statues, and this year is the fourth.



The statues are on the Calle Real today, Saturday and Sunday.

Everybody calls the main street in Santa Cruz de la Palma, "the Calle Real", but nowhere along it's length is there a street sign with that name! I used to suspect that the whole thing was invented to confuse visitors, but now I know better. It's called the Calle Real (Royal Road) because it's the one the Kings come along to visit baby Jesus each January 5th.

If you haven't seen them before, living statues stand perfectly still (or try to!) until you put money in the hat (or whatever), and then they perform.
Last year there were different living statues each day, and you could vote for the best.
I was at work today, so I didn't get to see them myself. All these photos are by Helen Bennett

Considering how rotten the light was today, I think she did a great job.

You can see pictures of last year's statues here and videos here

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Helen Bennett

Sunrise over La Palma by Helen Bennett

La Palma has a talented new digital artist called Helen Bennett. She left her high-stress job in London and moved to Franceses, in Garafía, with her partner. They bought a fixer-upper and set about fixing it up. Of course this wasn't always smooth going - you can read their adventures at http://casa-estrellas.blogspot.com

Helen also did the layout for several issues of Ruido.

For these two pictures, she used a digital model of the island, and added the lighting.

You can see more of Helen's work at http://helen.helresa.com/


Sunset behind La Palma by Helen Bennett

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Corpus Christi in San Jose

Like a lot of places, San José in Breña Baja celebrates Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) on the Sunday ten weeks after Easter Sunday. Traditionally, they make carpets out of coloured salt, like this one from 2006. (You can see more at http://sheilacrosby.com/fiestas.php .)



The most famous of these carpets are in La Oratava in Tenerife. This year they'll be making them on Thursday, May 29th.

This year's carpets in San Jose are almost all made of leaves, seeds, and petals, like they do in Mazo. (See Friday's post.)






The whole thing is on a smaller scale than Mazo, but then San José is a smaller village than Mazo.



And at least one person is delighted with the change from salt to seeds. Breakfast is served!

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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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Mother's Day

Today is mother's day in Spain.

And to the best of my knowledge, the first place in Spain to have an official Mother's Day was Breña Baja. The local poet, Félix Duarte Pérez , left home for Venezuela at some horrendously young age (fifteen, I think). Not surprisingly, he missed his mother a good deal, and they sent each other lots of letters. When he finally came home at the age of 35, he persuaded the town hall to adopt the "American" idea of Mother's Day.

They decided to celebrate it on the first Sunday in May. And in Breña Baja, people traditionally wear flowers. If your mother's still alive, you wear a red one, and if she's died, you wear a white on.

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Fiesta de la Cruz (again)

Bride, groom, and bridesmaid

I was a little slow getting out to see the crosses this year, but I was glad I made the effort. The traditional crosses were much the same as last year (see http://sheilacrosby.com/fiestas/cruz.php ). But one street in Santa Cruz absolutely delighted me.


Wedding breakfast

For the last few years, it's been fairly common to have a few mayos or machangos beside the cross. These are giant rag dolls, something like scarecrows or the guys I used to make for bonfire night.


More wedding guests

Well this street in Santa Cruz was full of them. The display just went on and on. I tried to count them, but I got lost somewhere after 200.


More wedding guests

At the bottom end they, had a 1960s wedding, with bride, groom, and lots of guests.


The bride's mother perhaps?


More wedding guests

Further on, they had people picnicking at the Las Nieves Fiesta.


The picnic




I think he's hungry, don't you?

Including one man who had clearly overdone it.


And he was thirsty earlier on

Higher up there was a protest march.


The protest march.

With people watching it.




Watching the march, with the nibbles to hand

Higher up still, I found people fishing in the street.

Hope they got a good catch.

And at the very top, they had an entire Easter parade. (see Holy Week Processions)


Holy Week

No wonder they won first prize!

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San Jose Manor House, R.I.P.

San Jose has a ruined manor house, dating from something like the C16th. I don't know the building's history, but the island has lots of old manor houses left from the days when sugar cane made the island was rich. I've always dreamed of one day being filthy rich enough to buy it and restore it, because it must have been gorgeous once. It's no bigger than my modern house, but it had carved balconies and wooden ceilings.

For some time it's been empty and far too dilapidated to live in. I heard that the owners couldn't get planning permission to fix it, so it slowly decayed while they argued with the bureaucrats. I found that rather sad.


And this evening it caught fire. The roof beams were tea - resin-filled heartwood from the Canary Pine. It doesn't catch fire easily, but once it gets going, there's no stopping it. It also burns with a distinctive smell, clearly noticable even from my house at the other end of the village.

So I imagine that's pretty much the end of that. I can't see anyone restoring it now. So that's a bit more of the village's heritage gone.

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