The biggest cattle fair and country market on La Palma will be held at San Antonio del Monte this weekend, in honour of St Anthony of Padua. About three hundred years ago, San Antonio was one of the biggest villages in Garafia, but the people gradually moved away. Now there’s just a pretty little church, a house where pilgrims used to stay and for one weekend a year, a…
Mazo in La Palma is one of the best places to be at Corpus Christi. Of course, Catholics all over the world celebrate the fiesta, but in Mazo they make the most wonderful archways and carpets decorated with petals, leaves and seeds. Each village of the municipality makes an archway with a carpet and a little altar. During a normal Catholic mass, the host is put into a special vessel…
Like everywhere else, the Canaries have their own folk music, and no, it’s not “The Birdie Song.” The group Alfaguara will be performing folk music and dancing in traditional costumes on Saturday night, the 29th of May, in the car park in Cancajos. (Presumably, this means the big one at the north end of the village, opposite the Centro Cancajos.) And Barlovento has a fiesta, also this weekend. I haven’t…
Last night we went to look at the crosses. It was still very early, so the area around Cruz de la Pavona, at the top end of Breña Alta was packed with people. My husband was so busy not driving over pedestrians that he went past the turn off to go down the hill past the usual run of crosses. After that it was one way down the hill, so…
Last night we went to look at the crosses. It was still very early, so the area around Cruz de la Pavona, at the top end of Breña Alta was packed with people. My husband was so busy not driving over pedestrians that he went past the turn off to go down the hill past the usual run of crosses. After that it was one way down the hill, so…
A lot of people on La Palma take Holy Week very seriously. The bigger churches hold solemn processions, which look very exotic to my English eyes. They take various heavy statues along the street, and some of these statues are beautiful works of art from the 16th century. But the bit that grabs visitors’ attention is the costumes. They remind me of the Klu Klux Klan. This is unfair, because…