The Department of Cultural Heritage of the City Council of La Orotava directed by Delia Escobar, has organized various events for the Day of the Dead, in order to encourage the Canarian identity signs of this festivity. The special programming, launched for the second consecutive year, aims to recover traditional festivals and customs and bring them closer to the population in general.
La Orotava, in bone and soul is a thematic route organized for Saturday October 29 in order to make known the world of death from the history of art and the religiosity of the Old Regime and to see the incidence that the transition to the eternal life had in the churches and in its manifestations of plastic arts. At the same time, it will serve to discover chilling stories such as the death of the Freemason Diego de Ponte del Castillo.
Those interested in participating can register via email [email protected] or by phone 696568419 and must pay 3 euros, an amount that will be donated to the Crevo association.
The writer and researcher José Gregorio González will offer on Tuesday the 25th at 6:30 p.m. at the Casa de la Juventud, the talk La Orotava, the valley of mysteries, taking a tour of the most unusual and enigmatic aspects that come together in the Valley, from the presence of esoteric symbology in architecture to striking encounters with UFOs, passing through witch stories, episodes and characters branded as miracle workers who professed their faith in the convents of the municipality or stories about houses that have traditionally been seen as haunted.
On Friday 28, in the same space, the researcher Eusebio Cabrera will give a conference under the title Los finados en Canarias, a tradition that dates back to ancestral customs that did not take root in our land until well into the 19th century, perhaps influenced by the emigration that came from America and enriched from before with the Ranchos de Ánimas of the XVI and XVII. It is not until those dates, when these customs took root in daily life. However, the Disentailment of ecclesiastical assets at the end of the 19th century, the frontal attack on everything divine and the disaffection for the supernatural and near-death caused this tradition to decline little by little.
The arrival of the electric light to many towns during the beginning of the 20th century caused the cinema and the powerful North American campaigns to replace these traditions and festivals of Saxon origin such as Halloween gained more strength, but due to the research work and the commitment of many, They have been rescued again.
