MY TOWN AND TRADItiONAL FESTIVITIES

Rocío Parra SaizValera de Abajo

INDEXMy town• Localition• Inhabitants•Monuments

Traditional festivities•Moors and Christians

-Costumes-Typical things-Events

MY TOWN: Localition /inhabitants

I live in Valera de Abajo. It´s a small village. Valera is located in the province of Cuenca,42 Km far from Cuenca, the capital . My village has got 1.500 inhabitants.

MY TOWN: MonumentsThere are just a few

monuments that were important in the past but they are not very well preserved. For example there is an old palace. Also, there are eight chapels and two convents, one of them is today our old church

My favourite festivity is “Moors and Christians”. The most important day is the third Sunday in January and it continues for the next week. This celebration happens only one time in the year.

This festivity started around the XVI century, but the costumes are preserved how the first day.

Traditional festivities

Moors and Christians: costumes

•The Moor´s costume is more reminiscent of the Turkish dress, with baggy red turban, belt and cape. They also wear black vests adorned with bright blue shirt.

Moors and Christians: costumes

•The Christian's costumes maintains the integral black color worn by men, with a bouquet of brightly colored artificial flowers on the hat that provides a nice contrast to the set.

Moors and Christians: costumes

Moors and Christians: typical things

Participants carry shotguns and make downloads of gun powder.They carry also two traditional instruments: Spanish flutes and drums.

Moors and Christians: events

The festivity  begin with the concentration of troops of Moors and Christians in the main square of the village. Then, they go to the church and we celebrated the “vísperas”. This means the day before.

The Sunday is the most important day, we celebrate one ceremony in honor of “El Santo Niño de la Bola”. After that, we go to a procession. We call it “dichos”..Here, the two sides, the Moors and the Christians, fight verbally for taking the ownership of the image of the saint. At the end, the moors are converted to Christianity.

In the afternoon we held the "appointment", where people have to "comply" collects their offices:one general, one captain…

After that, we go to the square and the two companies move the flag and everybody go to see this. It´s very funny!

Everyday, the boys go to the house of the person that they have to comply and they drink wine.

On Monday, we celebrate the ceremony for the person how died during the last year and he was Christian. In the afternoon, we have a special snack. We call it “colaciones”. It has got  roasted chick peas, hemp seeds, candy, almonds ...and it is taken with wine. The wine is present in all the acts.Here, the teenagers girls go to deal the “colaciones” to the Christian and moors boys.

Later, at night, we celebrated one concentration in the square near the church. We called it “Despedida del Niño” and we see the fireworks.

On Tuesday, we celebrate the ceremony for the person how died during the last year and he was Moors. After that, we go to the square of the village where the boys carry the flag and move it.

In the afternoon, we celebrate a small play battle and after that, in the square of the village, some boys that they want to participate how a moor or a Christian, pass under the flag and kiss it. With this act, we finish our festivity.

In this party, only the boys can participate, but the girls are who do all the work.

The end