Los Indianos

Author and friend in Los Indianos, Santa Cruz de la Palma

In Santa Cruz de la Palma, the highlight of Carnival is Powder Night - Los Indianos. This commemorates the people who emigrated from La Palma in the 1940s to 1970s and especially those who came back rich.

An Elegant Lady

Anyone can join in the parade. You just dress up in white, maybe have a suitcase full of Monopoly money, and for some reason throw vast quantities of talc at each other.
When I say "vast", the town hall gives out something like six tons of it to people in the parade, and one supermarket was selling 25 kg sacks.

A Not-so-Elegant Lady

When I lived in Santa Cruz, you could follow the progress of the parade by the cloud of talc drifting above the four-storey buildings on the route. Once the parade finishes, there's dancing in the street (of course) and a fun fair, which my son loves. Not surprisingly, we had a great time.

Batucada (percussion) in the Plaza España

Carnival

Yay! It's carnival, and I get sometime off for fun. (Actually I had to take time off work, because my son's off school, but I felt overdue for a break anyway.)

So the house is a little tidier, and I've finally sent off photos I promised to send weeks ago, and I've mended stuff that's been broken for over a month. And I got to see the kids' parade and the big Los Indianos parade (see the blog about La Palma.) On Thursday my friends come back from El Hierro, and they're taking my son to their house overnight so I can work Thursday and Friday. They're even bringing him back on Friday afternoon, and then we're all going to the sardine's funeral together.

That's right. Carnival ends with a funeral for a sardine. It's totally mad and I love it. (More details here.)

A Funeral at Last!

Last night I went to the delayed Sardine's Funeral in Los Sauces. I finally discovered why people say it's better than the sardine's funeral in Santa Cruz.

They say it because it's true.

The crowd was far bigger than in Santa Cruz, and over half of them wore fancy dress - mostly Halloween theme costumes. This is my hairdresser. I didn't recognise him nutil he spoke.


First they had a butaca - serious percussion. I took a lot of video, but there wasn't much light and most people were wearing black, so it's not brilliant. I need to learn to edit video.


At the end of the butaca it poured with rain for about ten minutes. Imagine a couple of thousand people all looking for shelter and saying, "Oh no!" all at once. Thankfully it stopped pretty quickly.

Then I wondered about for a bit and had a beer (alcohol free - I was driving).

Then the sardine appeared.


Now in Santa Cruz its a funeral procession, and the mourners are wailing with fake grief, but they're walking in a dignified way.

In Los Sauces, the sardine is being tossed around as though it's on a rough sea. The pall bearers really work up a sweat. I found out the hard way that it gets a fair bit of momentum - the guys at one side can't necesarily stop just because they're going to crash into a phtograher. I was glad I only took the compact camera. And the mourners jog and pogo and scream like banshees. It's like Santa Cruz used to be, only better. Monty Python eat your heart out. What's more, there were a couple of smaller sardines brought by groups of kids. The sardine goes around the square twice, and then through the back streets towards the huge new bridge, back along the main street, round the square twice again, and finally onto the bier in the square. The kids' sardines went under the bier.

Of course it ends with the sardine being cremated. And in Los Sauces, the crowd doesn't just watch and cheer. They pogo and boogie and scream again. And there are lots more fireworks.

By then it was one in the morning, so I didn't stop for the public dance. I just ate a sandwich and went home.

Next year I'm going back, and I'm definitely dressing up.

Los Indianos

Today was Los Indianos, which is usually my favourite night of Carnival. It's the night when people dress up in white, maybe have a suitcase full of Monopoly money, and for some reason throw vast quantities of talc at each other. By vast, I mean tons. Literally tons.

My son spent last night with my friends on Franceses. The plan was for them to bring him home this afternoon, then we'd all go out and get covered with talc, and then they'd stay the night.

How do you make God laugh? You tell him your plans.

Since I went out with my husband last night and had a good time, I was hung-over this morning so I never got my costume ready. Then Helen got a stinking cold, so they brought my son home, and then went back to Franceses. And then it started raining.

So we stayed home and I got the novel up to 75,000 words instead.