If you were shopping in Santa Cruz last week, you might have seen a road train full of infants, grinning and waving, and shouting out “¡Feliz Navidad!” The road train belongs to the local bus company. It’s available for hire all year, but it seems to be pretty solidly booked in the last week of school term. The school where I used to work had a regular routine. We put…
Christmas trees are a newish thing here, although probably most houses have one now. The main traditional decoration is nativity scenes. Some just show the stable, but some public ones are so elaborate that they include the whole village, and it’s always a Canarian village. Obviously that’s historically inaccurate, but no more so than all the English nativity scenes where Mary and Jesus are blond. This one was on display…
The Christmas decorations are up in Santa Cruz, and most of the villages too. I particularly liked this Christmas “tree” outside a shop on the main street in Santa Cruz. It’s made from the dead flower stalk of an agarve plant. When I arrived on La Palma in 1990, Christmas trees were very much an innovation, and expensive. Most people had nativity scenes instead, and they still do. But Christmas…
Santa Cruz de La Palma will hold their second “Night of Stars” tonight. The headline act is Priscilla Hernández, a New Age singer originally form La Palma, who’ll be presenting her new CD “The Underliving”. But there’ll also be other performers at various times and places, Astrotour stargazing at the Marina, Batucada (serious percussion) in various aprts of town, an exhibition of rally cars on the Avenida Maritima, a bouncy…
Francis Drake tried to enter Santa Cruz harbour on November 3rd, 1585. This was after Drake was knighted and before the defeat of the Spanish armada. Drake left Plymouth with 23 ships and over 2,000 men, heading for the Caribbean. The prevailing winds meant that the logical route was via the Canary islands, so he headed for the biggest port in the Canaries at the time – Santa Cruz de…
The Island’s Museum is in the old convent of San Francisco. The building itself is lovely. It dates from the early 16th century; work started in 1508, just fifteen years after the Spanish conquest. (Forty years ago, it was the technical school, and my husband studied there. It certainly looks better than the concrete box I studied in.) The church is still a church, and the music school stands beside…