A small rock in the Atlantic

Friday is Canary Day. It's a big thing here, and the celebrations have started already.

On Wednesday evening they had bouncy castles in the port car park. This was shortly followed by a foam machine. The kids loved it. My son was so delighted that he dived in with all his clothes on. I'd have been seriously tempted to join in except that I had my expensive camera with me. So I had to stay upwind of the fun.

Tomorrow most schools will have a party for the second half of the morning. They'll serve traditional food and play traditional folk music. Some will have Canarian sports. And the real celebration is still to come.

Labels: Canaries, Canary Day, Canary islands, fiestas, La Palma

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Sunday, 25 May 2008

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!

Labels: Canaries, Canary islands, Corpus Christi, culture, fiestas, La Palma

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Friday, 23 May 2008

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.

Labels: Canaries, Canary islands, culture, fiestas, La Palma, Mazo

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Sunday, 4 May 2008

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.

Labels: Breña Baja, Canaries, Canary islands, culture, fiestas, La Palma

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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!

Labels: b, Breña Baja, Canaries, Canary islands, culture, fiestas, La Palma, Santa Cruz

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Friday, 2 May 2008

Fiesta de la Cruz

Tomorrow is Fiesta de la Cruz -- The Festival of the Cross. Like many Catholic places, La Palma has a great many roadside crosses. Tonight, practically all the ones in Santa Cruz, Breña Baja and Breña Alta will be decorated, most of them gorgeously. Since most of the crosses are hung with jewelry, the people who worked on them sit close all night, usually making a party of it ans setting off lots of fire-crackers. Some groups have been working all year.

The decorations will stay up all day tomorrow (May 3rd), but most of the locals go around admiring crosses late tonight, which is much more atmospheric. If you're on the island and you don't have small kids, get a hire car, quick! The easiest itinerary is to go up to San Isidro on the road and follow the old donkey track down. Yes, it's wide enough for one car, and tonight it'll be one way, downhill, past the crosses. Just follow the crowd. Keen photographers should try to get someone else to drive, and you'll want a high ISO setting if you're shooting at night.

Alternatively, you can see plenty of crosses just by walking around Santa Cruz. Look for places brightly lit up in the middle of the night, surrounded by bunting and green branches closer to the cross itself, and follow your nose.

Either way, take plenty of small change. Each cross has a collection. They aren't trying to make a profit here, just looking to collect enough to buy materials for next year's cross.

These photos are from last year's fiesta. You can see more at:
Fiesta de la Cruz 2007