The painstaking work of the thousands of people who create the traditional Corpus Christi street carpets was enjoyed by big crowds across the Canaries yesterday.
The centuries-old street art custom takes the form of stunningly colourful carpets of flowers and sand which are laid by scout groups, schools, neighbourhood associations and even private companies on the streets of the centres of many parts of the islands to mark the late-June religious festivity.
The best-known are arguably those in La Orotava in north Tenerife, where the giant ‘alfombra’ traditionally laid in the square outside the town hall made the Guinness Book of Records in 2007 as the largest natural sand carpet in the world, covering an impressive 859.42 m².
Not far behind in the popularity rankings comes La Laguna, the one-time capital of Tenerife which has celebrated Corpus Christi almost since it was founded in 1497. Faithful to the tradition, the streets around the cathedral in the old part of the World Heritage City were once again lined with almost 70 of carpets of all shapes and sizes, work on which began on Saturday evening and continued throughout the night in many cases.
Although this year, La Laguna town hall opted to lay its own official carpet – measuring 20 metres long and 4 metres wide – on one of the main pedestrian streets, it shipped in 40 lorries of heather, tonnes of volcanic sand, and over 20,000 decorative flowers (particularly roses, geraniums, sunflowers and carnations) for use by other carpet-creators.
Meanwhile, over in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria one of the big sand and flower carpets on the capital’s flagship Plaza de Santa Ana acquired a rarely seen political note with a message of peace carried by a giant dove created by the artists responsible for the design. A spokesperson for the city said the carpet had been prepared in solidarity with the island’s Palestinian Community, which helped with the preparations.
Picture credit: Ayuntamiento de La Laguna
