The Kings are Coming to La Palma!

Gaspar visiting Santa Cruz de la Palma

Although Father Christmas does visit Spanish children, he's a new arrival. Traditionally the presents arrive on the morning of January 6th, when the three kings visit baby Jesus. This is why the sales haven't really started yet - Christmas isn't over here. And on the evening of the 5th, they ride in procession through most of the major towns and villages in Spain. In previous years we've usually gone to see the procession in Santa Cruz. They start at the south end of town and meet up at the Plaza España, where they find they're all following the same star and agree to travel together. When they get to the Alemeda, they find King Herod's court. Of course, he wants to know what they're doing in his country, and then makes them promise to tell him where the child is. They travel up the baranco from the concrete ship, and find Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a cave, and leave their presents. Then finally, an angel tells them not to even think about telling Herod where to find Jesus.

At that point they light the bonfires in the (hopefully dry) river bed and set off the fireworks.

There's a list of processions on La Palma at the end of the post. I'm surprised here's no mention of the one in Santo Domingo de Garafía, which is supposed to be particularly good. Traditionally it starts at 10pm, and there's a long drive back for me, which is why I've never seen it.

The shops will stay open at least until midnight for people who've left buying presents until the last minute. Tuesday is a public holiday, and the sales start on Wednesday - if you've got any money left by then.

Gran Cabalgata de Reyes (The procession of the Three Wise Men)

• Santa Cruz de la Palma: at 19.00. Itinerary: Plaza de la Constitución, Calle O'Daly, Pérez de Brito, Doctor Pérez Camacho and Avenida de las Nieves up to las Cuevas de Carías.
• Villa de Mazo: at 18.30. From Monumento de la Paz up to la Plaza.
• Puntagorda: at 18.00. From Telecentro cultural del Roque
• Tazacorte: at 19.00.
• Los Llanos de Aridane: at 18.00. Itinerary: Avda.Enrique Mederos up to Plaza de España
• Breña Baja:at 17.00 at Los Cancajos. Itinerary: From the "Las Olas" apartments up to the tourist information office
• San Andrés y Sauces: at 19.30 at Plaza de Monserrat

Sorry this post is a bit late. I've got flu and our internet connection wasn't working earlier. I just hope thier majesties know that I've been a good girl, because bad children traditionally get coal.
Baltazar visiting Santa Cruz de la Palma

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Fiestas in Early September

There are two nice fiestas coming up at the beginning of September.

In El Paso, the statue of the Virgin of the Pine was carried in procession from the hermitage up in the mountain down to the village. On September 6th, there will be another procession to carry it back.


The Devil's dance, Tijarafe, 2007.

In Tijarafe in the early hours of September 8th, the devil will join the dance. This is a man in a suit covered with lit fireworks, and no, I don't think it's entirely safe. On the other hand, I've never heard of any bad accidents, and it's certainly memorable and great fun. The party starts the night before, of course, with the usual music, dancing, and mobile bars.

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Carnival Murgas

Los Zeta Zetas from Tenerife Photo: Murgascanarias.es

What are murgas when they're at home?

Well, they're not murgas. They have to go out to do that. And they usually go out during Carnival.

A murga is a large, costumed choir singing a medley of popular tunes with their own lyrics. The costumes can be quite elaborate, and run from clowns, demons, big, hairy blokes dressed as schoolgirls, Arabian princes, or fairies (usually the big, hairy blokes again.) The lyrics are usually satirical, with politicians as the main targets, but anything's fair game. Think of a cross between Monty Python and "Have I got News for You". Actually, you need very good Spanish to follow the lyrics. After 18 years here, I still only get about half of them.

It's all very professional, and I'm sure they start making the costumes and as soon as Christmas is over, if not earlier.

Some of them sing unaccompanied, but most use kazoos and/ or percussion. The really big spectacles are the official competitions for Carnival in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas - the tickets sell out in hours - but we also get some on La Palma during Carnival. In fact Los Llanos will hold a murgas festival on Sunday, February 15 at 5 pm, on the main carnival stage. And the murgas will be going around the suburbs and villages on the following Tuesday and Wednesday. They'll be in Puerto Naos at 8pm.

At the time of writing, the Santa Cruz website is down. Watch this space.

I suspect that the satirical lyrics are at least part of the reason why Franco banned Carnival. he was a miserable so-snd-so anyway, but I'm sure the main reason he banned it was that he didn't want crowds of people on the street with drink in their tums and politics on their minds. You know, "As soon as this pub clo-o-ses, the revolution starts."

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The Kings are Coming!

Although Father Christmas does visit Spanish children, he's a new arrival. Traditionally the presents arrive on the morning of January 6th, when the three kings visit baby Jesus. This is why the sales haven't really started yet - Christmas isn't over here. And on the evening of the 5th, they ride in procession through most of the major towns and villages in Spain. In previous years we've usually gone to see the procession in Santa Cruz. They start at the south end of town and meet up at the Plaza España, where they find they're all following the same star and agree to travel together. When they get to the Alemeda, they find King Herod's court. Of course, he wants to know what they're doing in his country, and then makes them promise to tell him where the child is. They travel up the baranco from the concrete ship, and find Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a cave, and leave their presents. Then finally, an angel tells them not to even think about telling Herod where to find Jesus.

At that point they light the bonfires in the (hopefully dry) river bed and set off the fireworks.

There are also processions in Los Sauces and Santo Domingo de Garafía. The latter is supposed to be particularly good, but it doesn't start until 10pm, so I'm going to give it a miss.

The shops will stay open at least until midnight for people who've left buying presents until the last minute. Tuesday is a public holiday, and the sales start on Wednesday - if you've got any money left by then.

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Fufo horses

Fufo horses in Tazacorte.

Today (Monday 29th) is the feast day of St Michael. Since he's the patron saint of Tazacorte, last night the town celebrated with their famous dancing horses. Famous on La Palma, at least.
Would you believe, it's the first time I've seen this in almost 18 years of living here.


The crowd following the fufo horses.

Well, it's fun. As you can see, a horse-shaped frame gets covered with strips of brightly coloured tissue paper. The "jockey" fits through the middle, and makes the horses dance. Altogether, there's about a dozen horses and one giraffe. Actually, whoever made the giraffe didn't spend a whole lot of time in zoos. It's exactly like the horses, except that the neck is a lot longer.



Fufo horse in Tazacorte.

The procession stars near the town hall. The band plays Mexican music, and horses move very fast, which makes it very hard to get a good photo, especially since there isn't much light available. They dance through the streets for maybe a kilometre, and then they have a break. at this point, a lot of people get their photos taken with the horses. Mostly, I think, children from the town. (Like most fiestas on La Palma, tourists are welcome to join in, but the locals do it for themselves.)



Tea break for the dancers. Well, probably not tea.

And then they dance their way back to the town hall, where the dance speesd up, and the crowd mixes in with the horses. By that time, the crowd were singing, Lo que pasa es que la banda esta boracha - "The thing is, the band's got drunk." They certainly weren't, you know, because they kept perfect time as the music got faster and faster and the dancing got wilder and wilder.


Fufo horses in Tazacorte.

One website says the horses date back to the 19th century, while the book on Palmeran fiestas says it was brought from Cuba "in the twenties", and the horses originally danced during carnival. I haven't been able to find out what the word fufo means. There is a Mexican word fufu, which means "to rebel against a difficult situation, like a spitting cat."

Fufo horses in Tazacorte in front of the Town hall.

And after the horses, there's a parade of carnival-style floats. To my surprise, there were only three of them, but they were beautiful.

Peter Pan float, Tazacorte fiesta

The beauty queens, Tazacorte fiesta

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The Devil's Dance

As usual, the devil paid a visit to Tijarafe's annual fiesta.

It starts off like most fiestas. The village centre is off the main road, and on the way in, I passed mobile bars, blasting out music at full volume. The only surprise was that the music was drum and bass. When I reached the main square, higher up, I found it decorated with white bunting and packed with people dancing to the salsa band. I arrived at 2 am, and the crowd looked like it was just warming up.

Something I always notice at Palmeran fiestas - a lot of the younger people are pretty drunk, but it's very rare to see a fight. In fact I don't think I saw as much as a rude gesture in the hour and a half I was there.

Finally, at about 3:30 am, the giants and big heads appeared. These are standard carnival characters, and they wouldn't excite adults normally, but they're a sign that the devil will appear any minute.





The band launches into the traditional song, which goes something like, "Tra-la-la-la, the devil's coming soon." And then, sure enough, he appears.

It's a man wearing a metal suit covered with lit fireworks, and he heads straight for the middle of the crowd. Most of the jet is directed upwards, and I don't think you'd get serious burns if you got too close, but most people try to get away (I wouldn't wear your best clothes to this fiesta. I really wouldn't). Of course some people farther away try to get closer, so the result is a lot of pushing and shoving. I was glad to be on the stone wall at the side of the square.

Meanwhile the band is singing, "Tra-la-la-la, the devil's here now," and "Tra-la-la-la, the party's not over yet."

After about five to ten minutes of this chaos, the devil runs out of fireworks and goes away again. And then the crowd thins out pretty rapidly as people go home.

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Photos of the Battle of Lepanto

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.



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.


They had a brief pause to wash the dirt out of their mouths, so I went around the back.


At that point, I finally got a good look at the Christian ship.


Then the victors marched their prisoners into the village.



(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.)


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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The Battle of Lepanto

Lepanto is the Italian name for the Greek port of Naupaktos, where a famous naval battle took place in 1571 in which a coalition of Christians trounced the Ottoman Empire. (Actually, there were also battles in 1499 and 1500, but since the Europeans lost to the Turks, we tend to quietly forget them.)

And for some reason they stage a re-enactment in Barlovento, every two years, as part of the fiesta.

Even better - they do it on dry land.

This sounds delightfully silly. So I've always been disappointed when I found out that I missed it yet again. Yup, in seventeen years, I've never seen it.

So I'm happy to say that it takes place tomorrow at 5pm, at the lower end of the village centre.

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The Romeria de San Antonio

A romería is a cross between a religious procession and a party. Typically, they hold a special mass and then take the statue out for several kilometres along a traditional route, followed by floats which hand out free food and wine, and lots of people, some in traditional dress, many of them singing and / or dancing.



Since it's a big event, most of them don't happen every year. Saturday evening saw the biannual romería from San Antonio to San José. The statue is San Antonio. It all moves along quite slowly, so you don't get tired, even though it's three kilometres and all uphill.

Of course some people enjoy the singing more than others.



As well as the big floats, a lot of people bring their own transport or a decorated cart for the food and wine. (Mostly wine). Some, like this one, are home-made and have a lot of character.



By the time the procession arrives in San Jose, it's about ten pm. Sad to say, if you had that many Brits drinking for four hours, you'd have some trouble. Not here. Although every body is merry, hardly anybody is drunk, because they take it slowly.

The evening ends with a concert in the old church square - this year it was rock - followed by a dance. The music went on until 5 am.

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Wednesday was the Fiesta del Carmen, which is celebrated in Santa Cruz and Puerto Tazacorte. They have a special mass, and then they take the statue of the Virgin of Carmen out for a procession. So far, so much like most fiestas on the island. Only in this case, they take the statue of the virgin out on a boat parade, to bless the fishermen.

These photos are fromPuerto Tazacorte. The boats go from the harbour, round to the bay just off the beach, where they sail in circles for a while before heading back to port. Then they have fireworks.

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