the celebration of Corpus Christi returned yesterday to the streets of the Island the color that the sands, salts and flowers of the traditional carpets combine to offer the best of ephemeral art. Definitely, The lagoonbut also tacoronteand of course the orotavawhich celebrates them next Thursdayis one of the municipalities that best expresses the religious feeling that accompanies this festival, one of the oldest on the Island.
Yesterday, in the streets of La Laguna, thousands of people came to enjoy the 45 rugs made by different groups such as schools, brotherhoods, neighborhood and cultural associations, as well as others on a private basis. As is now the tradition, the institutional carpet of the City Hall was also made, on the façade of the Casa de Los Capitanes.
The Laguna City Council collaborated with the groups to advance in the full use of elements of a vegetable nature, recovering flowers, heather, spurge, dates, etc., and gradually eliminating other elements of an artificial nature such as marble.
From eleven o’clock last Saturday, the municipal staff began to mark the streets of the route so that the carpet workers could start their work. Some carpets that already looked completely finished around two in the afternoon.
The final touches to the carpets were carried out yesterday morning, and under a radiant sun, which shone all day.
An ephemeral art that of the carpets, which disappeared under the passage of the procession that departed from the Laguna Cathedral, after the eurastia that began at five in the afternoon. The procession resumed the traditional route, of approximately 2.5 kilometers, through Obispo Rey Redondo, Nava y Grimón, San Agustín, Ascanio y Nieves streets and back to Obispo Rey Redondo to return to the Cathedral.
The Corpus Chisti festival in La Laguna is declared as Intangible Heritage, which provides additional protection to this tradition. It is one of the oldest religious festivities on the island, since as early as 1496, the year of the conquest of Tenerife, the Cabildo ordered that it be celebrated following the Sevillian model and that all the trade unions attend its procession carrying each his characteristic banner.
The lagoon streets welcomed nearly 50 rugs. | Fran Pallero
tacoronte
The other municipality in which the art of carpets shone with its own light yesterday was Tacoronte. There, in addition to the large central tapestry that could be seen in the Plaza del Cristo, another 80 carpets for groups and families were also made in the route that connects the churches of Santa Catalina and the Plaza del Cristo.
On this occasion, the designer of the central tapestry, Juan Fajardo, chose as a central motif one of the celebrations of the Catholic Church, such as the Youth Days, which according to its author, “this year celebrates the visitation of Mary to her cousin Isabel with the announcement of the arrival of Christ, which represents the moment of that good news”.
According to the person in charge of this composition, the work consisted of “a representation of the faces of both, in a situation of complicity, a scene that is surrounded by a border made up of knots and lilies.”
Juan Fajardo, who has been assuming responsibility for making this tapestry since 1987, explained that the creation of this edition, in relation to other years, “has implied a different requirement, because it has been made in a single painting with the two figures and with the letters of Corpus Christi also in large size”. The tapestry was affected by the passage of storm Óscar, but fortunately, yesterday, it looked completely finished after the intense work carried out for its recovery.
In Tacoronte the elaboration of tapestries was finished under the hot sun. | Fran Pallero
