Tacoronte celebrates this Sunday, June 19, a new edition of the Corpus Christi festival, in which the carpets in the street will be recovered. The Plaza del Cristo houses a large tapestry, the work of Juan Fajardo, which this year it pays homage to the island of La Palma and shows its rejection of the war. The route between the sanctuary of Christ and the church of Santa Catalina will once again be filled this Sunday with carpets made by neighbors with flowers, seeds, marble and colored earth, a tradition that was suspended during 2020 and 2021. Only Fajardo maintained during the worst months of the pandemic, its particular and colorful offering to Corpus Christi, which has not been lacking for almost four decades.
Fajardo details that the carpet for this year 2022, “for this Corpus of reunion”, is a song to peace made with almost four tons of marble. Two hands raise a cross and, in a broken space within the painting, a war scene can be seen, where the image of a child stands out. That recreation is within the rest of the nuances and colors that “are the representation of Corpus Christi, which contrasts with the gray tones of the war episode”, where “there is also a message of solidarity towards the island of La Palma”. And it is that to represent that warlike scene, ash from the volcano has been used, “in solidarity with the palm people.”
Fajardo’s design for 2022 shows “a view from above where the figure of Christ is observed in the Sermon on the Mount, saying the beatitudes, which in this case are those that mention the people who work for peace, and where the text reads: Blessed are those who work for peace, because they will be called children of God». This motto appears in the lower part of the tapestry, which is joined by other elements such as a dove with an olive branch in its beak.
The mayor of Tacoronte, José Daniel Díaz (NC), went to the plaza this week to take an interest in the work being done by the team led by Fajardo. The president recalled that in 2020 Tacoronte was “the only municipality in the Canary Islands that did not suspend its central tapestry, in the hope of returning to normality and, this year, with a war that is raging against us, we continue to bet on that return to a life like before.”
Díaz thanked Fajardo for his effort “for going every year looking for improvements in his work, giving our municipality higher levels of recognition to remain among the best Corpus in the Canary Islands.” For the Tacorontero mayor, “all those people who want to get to know him more closely have an opportunity this week, and on Sunday itself, in which they will be able to verify the involvement of a town in its traditions.”
The elaboration of the central tapestry will conclude tomorrow, Saturday. The Tacorontero City Council is already distributing material among the numerous groups that make carpets and preparing the route for next Sunday’s procession, which will run from 7:15 p.m. along the usual route: Sebastián Machado, Pasaje Abreu and Teobaldo Power streets. .
