Tens of thousands of people – it is said around 50,000 – gathered this morning in the small hamlet of El Socorro to experience the festivities in honor of the virgin that has given it its name for more than 500 years.
It all began at dawn, perhaps in the most exciting moment of the day, when the image appeared at the door of the parish of San Pedro, after the mass of Bishop Bernardo Álvarez and was received by thousands of pilgrims crowded in the square to the sound of the double pass ‘Al Socorro’ and the Descent began, which ran for four hours along the path that had become a great river of people, exceeding eight kilometers sharing religious devotion with pagan leisure, in what is considered the oldest pilgrimage in the Canary Islands.
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, almost 200 years after the appearance of the image of Chaxiraxi to some Guanche shepherds on the beaches of Chimisay (today El Socorro). However, the pilgrimage from Güímar to El Socorro, which began in December, has been carried out continuously for 177 years.
It is not a typical pilgrimage, neither in its appearance – here there are no magicians or traditional costumes, beyond some aboriginal dresses and t-shirts with the image of the Virgin – nor in the behavior of its participants, who returned today to star in a day where the doors of the hamlet were literally open to thousands of visitors before and after the entry of the Virgin to her hermitage, at noon, where the Eucharist officiated by Juan Manuel Yanes, vicar of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, began. .
This afternoon the Guanche ceremony will take place next to the Cruz de Tea, the place where the image appeared around 1400, according to Fray Alonso de Espinosa. At night there will be the exciting procession of Las Candelas and tomorrow, around five o’clock, it will depart back to Güímar, where it is expected to arrive in San Pedro before midnight, in a less massive climb, but just as festive.
