Events in La Palma

Like La Gomera this is an island of fiestas rather than events, mostly centred around religious dates or saints.  Below is a selection of some of the more popular of these festivities.

February

Carnival time – Carnival is celebrated 40 days before Easter and usually last about a week, though in some areas they do extend this to several weeks. The whole island celebrates with parades and street parties, each person trying to outdo his friends and neighbours in the extravagance of their costumes. The event is in theory bought to a close with the “Funeral of the Sardine” which is strongly featured in Santa Cruz, the capital, San Andres y Sauces and Barlovento. It is the burning of a gigantic cardboard fish and is supposed to symbolise the end of the festivities, but these usually continue with a large firework display.

Here are a few other festivals – there are many more in different localities at different times of the year.

Late January early February - Fiesta del Almendro en Flor is the celebration of the Almond Tree which blossoms at this time of the year.

Bajada De La Virgen held in Santa Cruz every five years (the next one is not until 2010) but it is interesting to know about  it.

No doubt about it: this is the most important celebration in the island, as well as one of the eldest. The Patron Saint of the island, the Virgin de las Nieves, is taken from her temple to El Salvador in Santa Cruz de la Palma, where she will stay for a month. The festivity is full of traditional performances but the major ones are: Danza de los Enanos (the Dwarfs' dance, a magical transformation of dancing men to the rythm of a polka), El Minué (a Versailles-style dance), La Pandorga (a children parade with lanterns made of paper), el Diálogo entre el Castillo y la Nave (the Dialogue between the Castle and the Ship, a poem read in the midst of booming cannon shots) and los Acróbatas (the Acrobats).

Corpus Christi - Sagrado Corazon - May or June

The night before Habeas Corpus (celebrated in May or June) Villa de Mazo enjoys the result of the year-long works on this celebration. Triumphant arches, carpets and so on, decorated with natural materials collected the previous summer, cover the cobbled steep streets of El Pueblo. Every district of the municipality designs its own arch, which can reach over 20 meters in height. All of them display a central figure (a circle surrounded by a crown of rays) which is a reproduction of St. Michael silver leading the procession the following day. Two Sundays later, El Paso is home to a similar celebration, but with a strong personality of its own. This time is the Sagrado Corazón (The Holy Heart) and carpets, corridors and arches are made. At the feet of the Holy Heart the procession stops and pigeons are set free, while thousands of small pieces of paper are thrown away, each one including twelve promises to the religious image.

El Diablo - September

The victory of Good over Evil has inspired this yearly popular celebration, which occurs on September 8 th in Tijarafe. The verbena begins just after the sunset, but it becomes more intense as the night falls. Suddenly, a parade of giant and large-headed figures burst into the square, throwing sparks over the crowd. The orchestra begins to hum a refrain, warning that the protagonist of the celebration is about to burst into the square: Tirirí tirirí ti ti, que El Diablo va a salir (“tirirí tirirí ti ti, the Devil is about to be on the loose”). And, soon after that, Satan himself bursts into the Plaza, launching all kinds of fireworks. About 30 kilos of gunpowder are used up in this performance which, by the way, takes just 20 minutes. Nobody knows for sure when this performance began, but it has certainly become the main act in the festivities honouring Nuestra Señora de Candelaria. In the district of Lodero (Villa de Mazo) El Borrachito Fogatero performs a similar act in the second fortnight of August, but in this case in honour of the Virgen de los Dolores