Santa Cruz de Tenerife moves its Carnival to June

In the call made by ‘zoom’, and which was supported by 102 group representatives, the alderman was accompanied by the Councilor for Fiestas, Alfonso Cabello, and the artistic director, Enrique Camacho. Bermúdez explained that, although attempts have been made, the current sanitary conditions prevent the convening of the Carnival in the traditional calendar, which would mean starting the contests, with the first phase of children’s murgas on Thursday, February 3.

Given the current situation and after weighing the pros and cons, the mayor and the Councilor for Fiestas invite the Carnival groups to redouble their efforts so that, if the severity of the pandemic subsides, they can face the mask party in June, with all the guarantees and adjusted to the conditions that are allowed. Thus, along with the contests and galas, the possibility of celebrating popular acts of the Carnival in the street adjusted to the sanitary standards that are allowed at that time. Now It remains to negotiate with the Port Authority for the installation of the scene of the acts, since the fairground has commitments in June.

The decision of the chicharrera organization is a ‘ultimatum’ to the celebration of carnival this year, because if the incidence of the pandemic did not allow it, it would be desisted until 2023, leaving the door open to celebrate events with Carnival groups throughout the year, depending on whether the covid allows it.

Santa Cruz bet is June, and its political leaders trust the forecasts of health experts who say that at the end of March the covid as it is known would begin to subside, in addition to contemplating vaccination rates and the application of new treatments.

The mayor kept his decision on the new festive calendar secret until an hour and a half before the meeting with the aim that they were the groups, protagonists of the official contests, the first to know, after the meeting he held shortly before with the artistic director of the Carnival, Enrique Camacho, who during the weekend already looked for the positive side of the call at the gates of summer.

Santa Cruz bets on Cadiz

The June decision is a swerve to the forecasts that the organization of Santa Cruz was considering, when it decided to go hand in hand with Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the last quarter both in the negotiation of the protocols for the celebration of the Christmas and Epiphany acts and in preparation for the Carnival, taking advantage of its dialogue with the Government from the Canary Islands

Last week, and despite the fact that so much the Minister of Health, Blas Trujillo, with the director of the Canary Islands Health Service, Conrado Domínguez, they insisted that now It was not time to talk about Carnival and that with the current levels of contagion it was unfeasible to celebrate the party, from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the date of its programming was announced.

The Carnival at the end of February and beginning of March It was not an isolated decision, but the result of a consensus between the artistic directors of both festivals, Israel Reyes, in Las Palmas, and Enrique Camacho, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

However, the same afternoon Augusto Hidalgo and Inma Medina presented the new dates, from mid-February to the beginning of March, the Chicharrero Fiestas councilor decided to put the brakes on and go back. While he was driving, he imagined the programming of the 2022 Carnival queen in the loneliness that ‘clothed’ the three Guardians of the Scepter and felt fear. Hence, the change of opinion, which is added to the requirements that the mayor of Santa Cruz also addressed to him one day and another, who asked him for ‘certainties’ when they had given a deadline last week as a decisive date to determine the definitive calendar, if the covid allows it, that Bermúdez and Cabello have just announced to the groups.

Celebrating Carnival in June and in the street is a bet led by the mayor himself, even without cutting with the director of the gala, who was already immersed in the preparations for galas and contests in winter, and who allows a truce to try to ‘escamp’ the incidence of contagion with the incentive of going out to the street.

It will be the second time that Santa Cruz celebrates it out of date. The previous one was in May 2000, in a version of Carnival that he prepared as a councilor for the Dámaso Arteaga area, where the capital was hosting the convention held by the Federation of European Carnival Cities (FECC).

Santa Cruz changes the format that would have been more similar to the call for Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to follow in the footsteps of Cadiz, the other Carnival of International Tourist Interest, like the chicharrero, who as early as September determined that, given the uncertainty of the sanitary conditions, he preferred to convene the groups of the Official Contest of Cadiz Groups (COAC) for June, which caused not a few casualties of renowned authors.

At the end, the capital of Tenerife and Cádiz ‘play it’ in June in the last attempt to save the Carnival of 2022, and despite even, in the case of Santa Cruz, that Tuesday, March 1 is a local holiday and, however, orphan of Carnival. Even so, the carnival chicharreras, which set their calendar in a traditional way to the celebration of the Lent, in June he would run into the Corpus Christi –without the pomp and circumstance of Holy Week in Tenerife–, but that it would not hurt to take into account to avoid the contest of comparsas or a hypothetical cavalcade while the procession of the Blessed Sacrament leaves on the carpets of salts and flowers; Thursday 16 is celebrated in La Orotava; the afternoon of Saturday 18, in Santa Cruz, and the morning of Sunday 19, in La Laguna; or the bonfires of San Juan, on June 24.

This truce buys time to groups and designers to face with more time, and sanitary guarantees, the celebration of the first Carnival that Santa Cruz will celebrate in June.