Walk during the day The hearts for Tejina is like being part of a role-playing game in which the residents of the different areas – El Pico, Calle Arriba and Calle Abajo – compete to give their patron saint, San Bartolomé, the best offering. Pique, as a fundamental part of the game, is always healthy. No one lost and everyone won by preserving, with more spirit than ever, a tradition that is more than one hundred years old. In this edition, in addition, the festival was more popular than ever thanks to the twinning with La Galga, in the La Palma municipality of Puntallana, where the associations traveled days ago to harvest the Canarian faya that served as a base for the hearts and that, For the first time, it could not be taken from the Tenerife mountain due to the fire.
Although it is true that the predominant fruits of each heart are the same each year – Calle Abajo uses lemon, Calle Arriba uses pineapple and El Pico uses pear – what does change are the motifs of the flour cakes. On this occasion, the neighbors made handmade figures with allusions to the Canary Islands, among which could be seen pots or even field workers. Nature was also the protagonist, with cakes dedicated to the seabed or the mountains. And finally, those figures that portrayed recent events drew attention: from a cake where you can see a man throwing a stone at a Forestry Brigades helicopter to a tribute to those who fought against the fire. The famous arches of La Galga, which are to Puntallana what hearts are to Tejina, were also not left out of the cakes as a sign of gratitude.
Between the cross, the faias, the fruits and the cakes, the hearts weighed a total of about 900 kilos that were carried on the shoulders of the neighbors to the door of the church in what constitutes a festival of “incalculable anthropological value” for the founder of the Tejina Hearts Association, Guadalberto Hernández. The moment of greatest emotion, he remarked, is when the hearts enter the square and are placed vertically “in a perfectly measured maneuver.”
The twinning with the palm tree town, as told to this newspaper Rafael Rodríguez, president of the La Galga Festival Associationarose from the connection – in some cases by family and in others by work – that the members of the Commission themselves have with Tenerife. Thus, every year they carry out on the Island of Teide a meal that this time was held in Tejina, with which they share the patron saint, San Bartolomé. From that meeting the idea arose that La Galga would put hearts on her bows made with the supervision of the tejineros and, in response, that Tejina would add the bows to her hearts. In mid-August, when the hearts begin to be made, the fire in Tenerife and the collection of the faya became an impossible task.
It was as a result of these events that the Association, and with the collaboration of the mayor of Puntallana Víctor Guerra and the president of the Palma Cabildo Sergio Rodriguez, it occurred to them to facilitate the collection of the faya on Isla Bonita. Of course, the Commission highlights that the “character” of the festivals of the two towns is “independent of the policy» and «the entire weight of the organization falls on the neighbors». The twinning of peoples, likewise, “was born to last.”
La Palma and the rest of the Islands were also present yesterday in the songs of the parrandas. Pina Rodriguezwho at 78 years old has the honor of being the oldest in the Hermanos Rodríguez Folkloric Association of Milan, confirms that “in terms of the protection of Los Corazones, the festival gets bigger every year.” She herself started in the party when she was only five years old and affirms that now the quarry is stronger: «It is tradition that during the Day of Canary Islands, children make hearts in schools. They also make small hearts as an offering to the Virgin of the Incarnation although this time it was not possible due to the concentration of events in one week.
Pina’s nephew, Hilario Felipe Rodríguez, 64 years old, started partying at age 24. His family – always linked to folklore – has taken Canarian music to countries like Italy and Venezuela. This year she was lucky enough that her group, which is from Calle Abajo, was invited to the Festival de Los Corazones, which is “the most important thing we can do.”
The president of the heart of the Down street it has been this year Laura Rodriguez, who was rewarded for her involvement in the Commission. When her colleagues related that it is men who carry the hearts, she dotted the i’s: “It is the neighbors who carry the burden, not the men. “I carried it last year.” Her words are another sign that the party is getting better. The difficulty she had this year was finding lemons, since she used to pick them on farms in the municipalities affected by the fire.
In PeakPresident Hector Diaz He felt “the weight of responsibility” on his shoulders more than that of his heart. And, to prevent this Sunday any failure from being the cause of a fight between parties, “everything must be perfect.” This is the furthest association, so they carried the structure for a mile and a half.
He also experienced the pressure Olaf Gonzalez, president of the heart of the up street: «We want all the pineapples to be at the same height and that is impossible because the fruit is not symmetrical. There is no one piece equal to another. While some were putting the finishing touches on this heart, others were playing the guitar and thinking about what lyrics to dedicate to the “competition.” And the smartest ones prepared a caipirinha with the surplus fruit.
