The Help did not disappoint again. Three years later, after two years of a pandemic, thousands of people from Guimareros, Tenerife and the Canary Islands -there were people from Gran Canaria who went to the Bajada and in the afternoon they went to Teror-, they say that almost 60,000 came from dawn, with the departure of the Virgin of San Pedro, to the small hamlet, to experience the mass in the hermitage, the Guanche ceremony and the procession of Las Candelas, all in the vicinity of Chimisay beach, where the image appeared 500 years ago about goatherds who made it their own calling it Chaxiraxi. From then until today, the devotion of the Canarians for this discovery translates into festivals such as those of Candelaria or yesterday’s pilgrimage, the oldest in the Canary Islands.
The oldest? There really isn’t a specific date. Octavio Rodríguez, the official chronicler of Güímar, places the origins of the path of the Virgin around 1643. However, the pilgrimage from Güímar to El Socorro, which began in December, has been carried out continuously for 176 years.
It is not a traditional pilgrimage, neither because of its appearance -here there are no magician or traditional costumes, beyond some aboriginal dresses and t-shirts with the image of the Virgin- nor because of the behavior of its participants, who returned yesterday to star in a day full of both devotion and festivity, where the doors of the farmhouse were literally open to the thousands of visitors before and after the entrance of the Virgin to her hermitage. This took place, as almost every year, at noon, after her departure at seven in the morning from Saint Peter’s Square, just after the pilgrims’ mass officiated by Bishop Bernardo Álvarez.
50,000 or 60,000 people, figures aside, the truth is that this Descent exceeded all attendance expectations, for a weekday, reaching a number similar to or higher than that experienced in 2019, when it fell on a Saturday. Not even the high temperature -almost 28 degrees at noon-, albeit softened by a constant breeze, could prevent a river of people from accompanying the Virgin in the four kilometers that separate San Pedro from El Socorro. Such was the avalanche of pilgrims that Our Lady’s throne had to be brought forward so that she could arrive on time for the twelve o’clock mass, and she did so almost just in time, on the shoulders of her steward and escorted by the group of Guanches and a large group of political authorities, including the President of the Government of the Canary Islands. Angel Victor Torres; the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, and the mayor of Güímar, Gustavo Pérez, as well as regional deputies, island councillors, mayors and councilors from various municipalities of Tenerife, including the mayor of Los Llanos de Aridane. A sign that the Bajada del Socorro transcends the Güímar Valley and becomes a symbol of Canarian for believers and non-believers.
The mayor of the municipality, Gustavo Pérez, who was making his debut as such in a Bajada, pointed out at the end that it is “an exemplary festival, full of traditions. Our best heritage is what the families of Güímar do, who care for and pamper our signs of identity generation after generation. And they do it with a respect that gives us the security of not having any noteworthy incident”, pointing out the figure of at least 60,000 people who yesterday visited the small village, where some 300 inhabitants reside.
“Dad, let’s go to a place where there are not so many people,” a girl blurted out to her father, overwhelmed by the crowd of people right at the entrance of the Virgin in the hermitage, a moment in which the health services had to attend to several people due to heat stroke, tension and low blood sugar, the few incidents of a day, beyond the fact that a young man made the Canarian Police work when he went up and down the Montaña Grande without being able to be detained.
The classic pasodoble Nuestra Señora ya partedo (music by Miguel Castillo and lyrics by former mayor Pedro Guerra) was not lacking throughout the entire journey, some notes that gather all the feelings of a town that yesterday experienced another demonstration of devotion, without age or physical impediments put a stop to the path, as Coral demonstrated with her cane. It never fails on September 7, if there is no pandemic.
Theatrical representation of the Guanche ceremony
Yesterday afternoon, in the Llano de la Virgen and next to the Cruz de Tea, the theatrical representation of the ceremony of the apparition of the Virgin to the Guanches took place on the beach of Chimisay, today Socorro.
The surroundings of the Cruz de Tea and the breakwater of the beach were the scene of the reconstruction of an event that occurred around the year 1400 and that was remembered yesterday with 200 extras, reconstructing the history written by Fray Alonso de Espinosa (1594), beginning of the Christianization of Tenerife.
