About twenty years ago we were in Salamanca, Spain, during the Easter holidays. Our hotel overlooked the impressive main square. Consequently we had a gallery view of all the Holy Week processions making their way through the square. On Good Friday morning we were woken at about 6.00am by a funeral march played by the band accompanying the sombre Good Friday procession.
I was half expecting something similar here in Las Palmas, not necessarily right under our window but close by. Nothing happened. Life went on as usual. While Phil played chess in the late afternoon I went walkabout, as I usually do, looking for interesting sights, doing a little people-watching.
In the Alameda de Colón it was obvious that something was expected to happen. There were stalls selling popcorn, lollipops, sweets of all knds, as well a bubble-makers and plastic noise-makers in the shape of trumpets and the like. One family group settled their grandmother in her wheelchair at a vantage point overlooking the street alongside the alameda. Some people perched on the fence, which looked uncomfortable. Sensible people turned up with folding chairs or plastic garden chairs and found a vantage point to set themselves up. For all the world it reminded me of our Saddleworth village, Delph, on Whit Friday when the same thing happens so that early arrivers get the best view of the brass bands marching through to take part in the Whit Friday Band Contest.
I wandered around for a while, went and bought myself an ice-cream and found a wall to sit on. And I waited and I waited. I got into conversation with a lady who came and sat next to me. She protested that this stone wall sitting was making her bum go numb. She turned out to be a long-standing Canaries resident but came originally from Granada. We discussed Holy Week processions we have seen over the years. I told her about the Whit Walk Pentecost processions we have.
Ladies dressed in black, adorned with black mantillas, went past us. Gentlemen in uniforms of various kind passed us also. Eventually, after a long, long wait, we saw movement in the parallel street. Statues were being brought out nearby churches. They would go round the bottom of the alameda, my companion told me, and make their way up the street we were overlooking.
And finally they appeared, with penitentes in their pointed hoods,
and amazingly small altar boys waving monstrances to spray incense around.
Banners were carried, more solemn than the Sunday School banners of the Northwest of England Whit Walks for Pentecost,
and there were an inordinate number of statues, too many to photograph them all, possibly representing all the stations of the cross.
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In the meantime Phil had won his chess game, gone back to the accommodation for refreshment and was seeking to meet up. This was difficult as General Bravo Street, which becomes Pérez Galdos street where we lodge, was full of procession. Having worked out where he was, I crossed the procession at a quiet moment, took a parallel street and managed to locate him.and still the procession went on and on!
Finally we made it back to our lodgings and had a beer and a snack.
Yesterday I mentioned the soaring vaulted ceiling of the Catedral de Santa Ana.
This morning someone posted on Facebook a rebuke to the Untied States Secretary of War, Hegseth, who has seemingly ben threatening to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.
One of the photos in this post bears a great similarity to the ceiling of the cathedral here. Religious crossover influence?
Life goes ln. Stay safe and well, everyone!


































