A small rock in the Atlantic

Corpus Christi in Breña Baja (San Jose)

Salt carpet for Corpus Christi in San Jose de Breña Baja, La Palma

San Jose in Breña Baja always celebrates Corpus Christi on the Sunday after Mazo's celebration. Since the whole thing takes out on a flat, tarmaced street, the tradition is to make carpets of coloured salt, with the altars being much more modest. In recent years, many of the carpets are made from seeds and petals, like the ones in Mazo.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Salt carpet for corpus christi in San Jose "]

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Much as I love the petals, I think it’s a mistake for San Jose to become a second-rate Mazo. I prefer salt (which I suspect wouldn’t work on Mazo’s steep cobbles, anyway). You can have brighter colours and finer detail.

The carpets are made on the Saturday evening, and stay there until Sunday evening.

Labels: Brena Baja, Corpus Christi, fiestas

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Corpus Christi in Mazo

One of the biggest annual fiestas in La Palma is Corpus Christi in Mazo. Catholics all over the world celebrate Corpus Christi, but here they celebrate with the most wonderful archways and carpets decorated with petals,leaves and seeds. On Wednesday evening and night, each village of the municipality makes their own archway with a carpet and a little altar, so Thursday morning is a wonderful time to see them. They'll be up until Sunday, but they do tend to suffer a bit from the wind and careless feet. And do pop into the church to see the decorations there, too.

On Sunday they'll hold a special mass in the church followed by a procession around the archways. Corpus Christi is the festival of the body of Christ. The priest walks on the carpets holding the blessed wafers in their special container (called a monstrance), and as he comes to each archway, he puts the monstrance on the little altar, kneels and wafts incense around.

You can see photos of the fiesta from
2010, 2009 and 2008

Labels: Corpus Christi, fiestas, Mazo

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The Red House in Mazo

The Red House, Mazo

La Palma's embroidery museum is upstairs in the Red House in Mazo. (I'll write about that in my next post.) Downstairs is a museum about the fiesta of Corpus Christi in Mazo. If you're on La Palma for June 3rd next year, for goodness' sake go and see it. If not, I strongly recommend the museum.

Some of the things used to make the Corpus Christi archways, and a block for chopping them up.

The fiesta is in honour of the Eucharist -- the body of Christ. Every year since the 1950s, they've decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers, seeds and leaves, and small parts of these archways are in the museum. Well, when I say "small", they're a small percentage of the whole. The cross below is about four feet high, but the biggest archway is about ten metres (33ft) high.

Corpus Christi Cross

And below, you can see the details of the cross. It makes me wonder how many hours it took to do the whole thing.

Detail of the cross

The museum is signposted from the main road through Mazo, and in any case, it's a pretty distinctive building. It costs 2€ to get in (1.50€ for residents) and it's open from 10 am to 2 pm Monday to Friday, and 11 am - 6 pm on Saturdays. Phone 922 428 587

A fish used to decorate an archway.

Labels: Corpus Christi, Mazo, museum

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Corpus Christi in San Jose

San Jose main street at Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi in San Jose isn't nearly as spectacular as it is in Mazo, but it's still very nice. Since the whole thing takes out on a flat, tarmaced street, the tradition is to make carpets of coloured salt, with the altars being much more modest. This year, many of the carpets are made from seeds and petals, like in Mazo.

This carpet is by the Residents' Association from El Socorro.

Much as I love the petals, I think it's a mistake for San Jose to become a second-rate Mazo. I prefer salt (which I suspect wouldn't work on Mazo's steep cobbles, anyway). You can have brighter colours and finer detail.

And this one is by the village children

Labels: Breña Baja, Corpus Christi, fiesta, San Jose

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Corpus in Mazo - Photos of this year

Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) is a big festival in Mazo. They decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers, seeds and leaves.

People collect the materials and work on intensively the pieces a couple of weeks in advance, but the archways are erected a Wednesday night. But they had a problem with the crane, and they were still putting up the last of them when I arrived on Thursday morning.

The largest archway is always in the square near the top of the street, and I found it still laid out on trestles, waiting for assembly. This meant that I could get close-up shots of things which would later be ten metres (33ft) up in the air.

The carpets beneath the archways are made using things rather like wrought iron gates, as stencils. They lay the "gate" down on the sand, fill the sections with petals or whatever, squirt with water-with-a-bit-of-glue-in-it, and lift the gate up again.

Each archway includes a small altar. I've been photographing them for years without really wondering why they were there.

This year I finally got to seed the procession, and it became clear. The fiesta is in honour of the body of Christ.

During a normal Catholic mass, this is put into a special vessel called a monstrance.
In this procession, the priest walks on the flower carpets carrying the monstrance: everybody else walks along the sides. As the priest reaches each archway, he places the monstrance on the little altar, kneels, and wafts incense towards it.

The main feast day is ten weeks after Maundy Thursday, so this year it was on the 11th of June. If you're impressed enough to book a holiday to see next year's Corpus Christi, it'll be on June 3rd.

Labels: Corpus Christi, fiesta, Mazo

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Corpus Christi in San Jose

Like a lot of places, San José in Breña Baja celebrates Corpus Christi (the body of Christ) on the Sunday ten weeks after Easter Sunday. Traditionally, they make carpets out of coloured salt, like this one from 2006. (You can see more at http://sheilacrosby.com/fiestas.php .)

The most famous of these carpets are in La Oratava in Tenerife. This year they'll be making them on Thursday, May 29th.

This year's carpets in San Jose are almost all made of leaves, seeds, and petals, like they do in Mazo. (See Friday's post.)