The Fiestas de San Benito Abad 2023 gave the official starting signal yesterday with the reading of the proclamation, which took place in the hermitage of San Benito and was in charge of the musician José Manuel Ramos, who valued “the universe of the lagoon couplets ” within the framework of this festival, and recalled some of its authors and “the great singers who have sung to San Benito, his pilgrimage, the work of the fields and its landscape”.
The act began with the presentation words of the mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, who affirmed that “if these festivities are a reunion with the agricultural and livestock tradition of our municipality, it is fair that a good part of the festivities return to their place of origin, which is this beloved neighborhood of San Benito and the surroundings of this temple”. Likewise, he highlighted the value of José Manuel Ramos to “proclaim our deep-rooted popular festival” and indicated that “we have the immense fortune of having one of the people who best knows our musical roots. And music is the most sincere voice that is born from the heart of a people”.
For his part, José Manuel Ramos began by recalling that he always had “the concern to listen, learn and memorize the songs that the old and not so old of Punta del Hidalgo sang.”
He thanked Julio Torres, researcher and author of this year’s program book, for “kindly immersing him in the history of the San Benito pilgrimage, photographing me programs, writings, stories and anecdotes”, and reviewed the origins of the Laguna devotion to San Benito, of its declared regional pilgrimage and of some of its traditions, such as that of the boats.
During his proclamation, in which he interspersed the reading of pieces of some coplas, he recalled authors such as Juan Pérez Delgado Nijota, as “great supporter of the pilgrimages”; Diego Crosa Crosita, whose “contribution to the Canarian copler was decisive”, or Rafael Hardisson. And he also valued the creation in 1952 of the Espiga de Oro contest, within the framework of the San Benito Festivities, and its numerous winners, and “an endless list of groups, in which their singers did San Benito in verses in the form of a plea, seeking their protection and benevolence”.
“And after this journey of learning and surprises, I felt privileged, I went back to those years of my early youth, in which I listened to the singers of my town, possessors of that truth when it came to singing and that aroused my interest in follow his footsteps and teachings. […] It only remains for me to wish the copla a long life and another 76 years to the San Benito Abad Pilgrimage,” he concluded.
To close the act, the mayor and the mayor of Fiestas, Dailos González, gave a detail to the town crier, before José Manuel Ramos himself offered a performance with his group.
