They have lots of religious processions on La Palma, where they take the statue out of the church and around the neighbourhood streets, with music provided by the town band. A lot of the statues are beautiful, but if you see a lot of these processions, they do get a bit samey.
This one started much like all the others, only on the salt carpet. But when they got halfway along the first carpet, the statue stopped and brightly coloured bits of paper and bougainvillea petals started raining down from a nearby rooftop, which was very pretty indeed. (I found out later that the papers had “The promises of the Sacred Heart” printed on them – at least twelve different ones.) And the kids scrambled to collect the papers while they released some doves.
At the end of the first carpet, the procession stopped again, beside the old church, where the choir sang about “The Source of Love” – and sang it very well, too.
Then the procession went off through the carpet and pictures of houses, and on round the back streets.
I left the procession to get ready for them coming up the hill through the other archways. And I waited, and waited and waited. It must have been a very long procession, because they still hadn’t appeared an hour later.
So I gave up and went home.
