There was a time when The Canary Islands were poorer and further away. There were always dead, deceased or deceased. Only at that time no one had heard of Halloween. There was no need for her to do so. At dusk on November 1, the wicks of the lamps illuminated the homes of Vilaflor -like many others on the Islands- in the Day of the Dead. A little lamp for each one.
At that time there was more imagination than money, which was a scarcer resource, so the women – the commemoration was, especially, their task – “prepared a bathtub with water and put on those little lamps in honor of their deceased,” he explains. Councilor Montserrat del Carmen González, whose responsibilities include Culture and Heritage.
“Until the 1950s, women made them,” he emphasizes. With deck cards, with pine cork, wadding, cotton thread or limpets. At that time there were no possibilities to buy lamps with their wicks, as the wick is called. They were naming their deceased loved ones and lighting them,” says the deputy mayor.
The importance that the Day of the Dead has in the Canary Islands from different perspectives – cultural, gender or socioeconomic – has led the Vilaflor de Chasna City Council to keep the flame of this date alive, remembering times when lamps were made, not bought. , and even the chrysanthemums that were taken to the cemetery were planted at home.
For all these reasons, the municipality inaugurated last Friday the “Memory of Light” exhibition, about wicks, lights, lamps and butterflies of the deceased. All of this in the municipal library with the presence of the mayor, Agustina Beltrán.
Yesterday, a thematic and musical evening was held to pay tribute to the deceased at the Vilaflor Casino, while tomorrow, Tuesday, there will be a workshop on making “dead lights” from 5:00 p.m. in the library. That same day, at 7:00 p.m., the official chronicler, magistrate and researcher Nelson Díaz Frías, will offer the conference “Life and death in the Chasna of past centuries” in the same space.
