Gone is 2020, the year in which Icod de los Vinos and La Guancha were unable to celebrate one of the most anticipated festivals: the dragging of the boards through the steep streets of the municipalities where San Andrés and the opening of the wineries is a tradition that remains alive and that congregates hundreds of people every year, thousands in the City of Drago.
With the exception of San Juan de la Rambla, which decided not to authorize it again as a precaution given the increase in cases of COVID-19, the other two municipalities in the Region have opted to recover the street to experience this festival. In the City of Drago it will only be enjoyed on November 29 and 30, on the eve and festivity of Santo, while in La Guancha it will last four days, since it will begin this weekend together with the great festival of wines and tapas in the Plaza de la Iglesia, with limited capacity and in which a large representation of wineries from the Ycoden Daute Isora and Canary Islands will participate.
“After the celebration of the Local Safety Board and the School Council, the possibility of accompanying from the City Council this party organized by the town was analyzed but it was understood that it was positive to establish a series of limitations that guarantee health security,” he says the mayor of icodense, Francis González.
To do this, it has dictated a mayoral party to defend that San Andrés can be celebrated this year in which it is established that dragging will be favored on Mondays and Tuesdays, away from the weekend, closing and lighting the streets and installing the tires at the end of the road that serve to cushion the hard blows of the pilots that make the public tremble.
In specific roads, such as El Plano, the preferred one for the youngest due to its steep slope, a limited capacity will be established, which will ensure social distancing and the mandatory use of masks, controlled by the members of the Local Police, Civil Protection and agents. private security, confirms the mayor.
Los Franceses, San Sebastián and El Sol streets also have their specific plans with a series of specific measures and in all of them the side prohibits the installation of barbecue pits and hot dog stands and the sale of chestnuts and new wine with music. “This year what is necessary is to defend tradition, so we ask that the consumption of traditional products of our gastronomy be done within the protocolized environments of the restoration and not in a popular and spontaneous way as in the past”, emphasizes the president.
Francis González is not afraid that the situation will get out of control. Until Wednesday there were only seven active cases in the municipality in which, in addition, acts were developed within the framework of the Fiestas del Cristo and there were no problems. Even so, it asks for prodencia and that the sanitary norms and the criteria established in the side are met.
In La Guancha, a score of streets will be closed to traffic in the old town (La Palmita, El Agua, El Sol, La Caldera, Los Alfareros, La Hoya de Arcos, Las Colmenitas, El Pinalete, San Antonio, Lanzarote, Icod de los Wines and El Risco), Santo Domingo (La Mayorina, San Felipe and Las Sabinas) and in Santa Catalina (Cañada Baja and Paseo El Parque).
Some more, others less, the important thing is that this year the tables recover the streets and the neighbors will be able to shout, louder than ever: “Viva San Andrés”.
