Three men have just crashed hard into the tires located at the end of El Plano street. It’s barely 5:30 p.m. and the atmosphere still seems to be warming up. The impact far exceeds that of teenagers going down at breakneck speeds on single boards. “Aaaay!” is heard among those who watch from the surroundings. There is a little silence, a couple of seconds. False alarm, fortunately. The protagonists end up coming out from between the wheels and get up. One of them turns to the audience and shouts: “Long live! Saint Andrew!».
Scenes like that, of heartfelt tradition, were repeated yesterday in the northern municipality of Icod de los Vinos, which was reunited without restrictions or masks with one of its most deeply rooted customs. The eve of San Andrés is synonymous with the dragging of the tables in its steep streets. Of these, Antonio González González, popularly known as El Plano, becomes the epicenter of a custom that is also a party. “It is the most emblematic and also the most dangerous,” synthesize those who know.
“I can’t look, I can’t look,” he repeats, half looking – even though he says he can’t – and half leaving, a lady on San Agustín street. Those who launch are mainly teenagers or twenty-somethings. «They have brought me since I was a child because my grandparents are from here; At first my parents wouldn’t let me dive because a relative hurt his leg, but since I was 14 I’ve been diving every year,” says Daniel, 25, as he walks up the street with the board under his arm.
Specifically, the festival consists of using boards or planks and sliding down the steepest slopes in the municipality. All this framed in the festival of San Andrés and also linked to the premiere of the new wine. “These boards are usually smeared on their lower part with animal tallow, grease, oil, candles… so that the sliding is greater and, consequently, also the speed,” says the tourist website of the Icod de los Vinos City Council. However, the leading role in recent years has been taken by methacrylate and other modern materials, which allow higher speeds to be reached.
Antonio, a resident of La Orotava and who had decided to go “to spend the afternoon” in Icod, stopped precisely at that point. “The speed at which they go down is incredible. This has always been fast and dangerous, but some kids now come down like lightning, “he said from the surroundings of El Plano street. “I once launched with a friend about 20 years ago, but one and no more,” said this 52-year-old viewer, whose plan was not to try wine. “You have to drive to get back, and the truth is that I’m more into having a beer than wine,” he said.
Speed and adrenaline, a dose of risk, feeling and the most festive component, with people drinking and eating in the streets. Those are some of the traits that were palpable in the evening in the center of Icodense. The spectacle left surprising moments: the sparks that come to be produced by rubbing against the asphalt, the jumps in a change of slope that El Plano street has, 360 degree turns at full speed and, depending on the case, skilfully braking. or impacts against the tires in which the occupants of the boards come to go through the air.
The Knight 2000
If one board stands out from the rest, that is the Caballero 2000, a colossus of tea that weighs around 400 kilos. Behind her is a group of about 20 friends who meet again around this time each year to jump on her (up to eight or ten people can crawl together) and also to have a good time. “Every year we get together, we have raffles and what we get is to buy food for everyone,” Jonathan González, one of the members of that group, explained yesterday. In 2021 they were somewhat hesitant about what to do given the limitations of the pandemic and in the end they only slipped down the street “a few times”; however, this Tuesday night promised to be more intense. “We can be up until three or four in the morning,” Jonathan predicted.
Although at some point in the afternoon the rain threatened to make an appearance, the event went by without setbacks and each time with more public and more people prepared to crawl. Even the mayor, Francis González, acknowledged that he was waiting to settle his commitments with the media so that he could also launch himself through the streets of Icodense. As he explained, he has his own board, an old black tea door, and he likes to slide both on the eve and on Saint Andrew’s Day. «It is a tradition that all of us from Icodense carry deep inside, almost in our veins. It is a hereditary matter. It could be said that you are almost born with a board under your arm. We live it with great emotion, with great intensity, “said the nationalist politician.
González considered that San Andrés even has a link component between the different nuclei of the municipal term. «It is the tradition that unites all the towns of Icod de los Vinos. It is true that there are some more well-known and emblematic streets, such as El Plano and the rest of the historic ones, but San Andrés, today, is lived in all the population centers of Icod, in all the neighborhoods, “he highlighted. “The boys run away and people go out into the streets to drag themselves and drink a glass of wine, a chestnut, a chop… There are family gatherings and parties that are held throughout Icod,” described the local councilor.
There are several theories about the roots of this custom, one of which stands out above the rest. «The origin of this tradition dates back to the 16th century, and it was born and developed on the occasion of daily work, that of transporting timber, and then, when it disappeared, it evolved and became a festive expression that was later linked to the festival. of the Apostle San Andrés and the premiere of the new wine”, details the Consistory on its tourist website. “Somehow, this official opening of the wineries has been transferred to the street, accompanied by the roasted chestnuts typical of those dates,” the institution points out.
wine corkage
«Every time November comes, obviously, we wait for the time of San Andrés to arrive, and I say the time of San Andrés because there are some before San Andrés and then there are 29 and 30, which, as tradition marks, are the the day before and the day”, recalled the mayor. “A lot of people came over the weekend. We have celebrated the corkage – I think the biggest popular corkage in Canary Islandswith more than 2,500 people– and the wine festival on Saturday”, he specified.
While Francis González reeled off some keys to tradition, the party continued around him. “Hopefully there are no incidents. Normally, if a series of unwritten rules are followed, things have to go well,” said the local president. It was already past 7:00 p.m. and the number of spectators and the atmosphere had grown considerably. It smelled like people at parties, grilled meat, and also, in some cases, the ethyl effluvia began to be noticed. «This is a show; They play it a lot », summed up José Carlos González, one of the already hundreds of spectators who gathered on El Plano street, when asked for an opinion on what he was seeing.
Fran Hernández was also among the public on the same road. She was accompanied by three other friends, all in their twenties and thirties. They attended expectantly to what was happening on the asphalt. “We are from Los Realejos and the Port and we came to see this for a while and then we will go to have something to eat and also to try the new wine,” she said. «I have never thrown myself because it has always given me a bit of a roll; Between the fact that the blow against the tires is dry and that, above all, there is the danger of hurting one’s leg, I have not dared even though they have invited me », she pointed out.
