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…
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…
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 https://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…
San Jose has a ruined manor house, dating from something like the C16th. I don’t know the building’s history, but the island has lots of old manor houses left from the days when sugar cane made the island was rich. I’ve always dreamed of one day being filthy rich enough to buy it and restore it, because it must have been gorgeous once. It’s no bigger than my modern house,…
Artefuego glassblowing studio is at the back of Plaza Sotomayor, where they hold the Argual flea market every Sunday. It’s a good idea to combine the two, because they hold public demonstrations on Sundays between 10 am and 2 pm. They combine fragments of lava into their creations, and to the best of their knowledge, they’re the only people in the world to do so. This makes every piece unique….
The 23rd of April is world book day, because it’s the anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (author of “Don Quijote”), the death of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejía Vallejo and Halldór Laxness. Actually Shakespeare died ten days after Cervantes, both on April 23rd. How come? At the time, England used the…