Photos of the week: Corpus Christi

The Corpus Christi archway, Villa de Mazo, La Palma island
The Corpus Christi archway by the La Rosa distract.

Corpus Christi is a Catholic fiesta to celebrate the body of Christ. In Mazo they celebrate by creating big archways and carpets decrated with petals, seeds and leaves. In San Jose they mostly make carpets with coloured sea salt. Rather obligingly, Mazo’s archways go up on Wednesday night and San Jose’s on Saturday night, so it’s much easier to get to both.

An archway in the form of a ship.

 

Detail of the flower carpet made of geraniums, wormword, tree heather and other plants. Villa de Mazo, La Palma island
Detail of the flower carpet

 

A little altar decorated with straw.

 

Detail of La Rosa archway

Mazo is the more famous fiesta.

 

 



Several of the salt carpets in San Jose are made by children.

Noah’s ark

But you can get really artistic with salt. Well, I can’t but the residents’ association from El Socorro can.

The Virgen Mary, in coloured salt.

Posted by sheila

Sheila came to La Palma with a six month contract and has stayed 24 years so far. She used to work as a software engineer at the observatory, but now she's a writer and Starlight guide.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.