The traditional festivities of Llanes

Latitude: 43.4206352 Length: -4.7540760
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The Magdalena celebrations the 22 of Julio; San Roque, the August 16, and the Guide, the September 8, are events charged with devotion and rites that are staggered throughout the good weather in the capital.

The three festivals are declared of tourist interest, the National Interest Guide Festival, and in all three, in one way or another, the land of origin and the sea are subliminally hidden, camouflaged as Catholicism. The women shine with persistent beads in their mythical llanisca costumes, the men, with more austerity in bearing and club in hand, animate the rhythm of the processions and the displays of revelry that go beyond officialdom and precede it. The young women present their images with the floral offering, "the ramu", and the young men carry pyramids of carefully carved bread that will later be put up for public auction..

The Pericote, the Jota de la Magdalena, the Pilgrim Dance and the Prima Dance, well they could be the "folixa" (party) controlled by an ancestral enthusiasm. The maritime processions, on the other hand, they are faithful exponent of the hard - and also friendly - correspondence that the llanisco has contracted with the sea.

Folklore in all latitudes of the rural world does not lag behind that of its capital. The "pikes" (rivalries) are equally compelling, with sides and more sides, parts and parts, factions of feelings, passions and an unusual competition that, paradoxically, helps reinforce the collective feeling and makes its inhabitants more prosperous. In the villages, all kinds of processions and pilgrimages survive, ramu auctions and an infinite range of honors. Each town has bothered to offer a different nuance to the neighbor, but custom, individually felt, carries in all cases the essence of contagion.

«Pa joguera ours». You can read this inscription on the shirts of the White side, in the town of Nueva. They are almost 40 meters in length and more than a ton and a half of weight on the shoulders. To lift the trunk three strings are pulled: two winds and a guide or main rope around which the pulse of a people congregates. The "voceru" is responsible for directing the coordination of the maneuver, and the trunk of the eucalyptus is becoming entitled to force of voices even if it takes a whole afternoon.

Plant a "bonfire" - «bonfire» and «joguera» too, to respect all the linguistic derivations- is to plant a trunk bigger than the neighboring town in the square of one's own. The size, the weight and the ceremonies that accompany it, speak of who feels more about his party and what commission of celebrations was finer that year. Sometimes night falls and the afternoon has not been enough to wake her up due to some mistake in the excavation of the well or lack of coordination. But no town fails, and the square dawns, the "prau" or the chosen throne, with its singular king for a year.

Some argue that the classic offering of the "ramu", the "bonfires" or raw dances, go back to an ancestral culture difficult to define. For scholars in the area, there is a clear identity with the plant nature of the region. Prima dance, for example, speaks of a rhythm previous to Christianity. This collective dance of circular and choral character, which is usually performed in the church or around the campfire, is for the students of folklore, the way of fraternizing that the community periodically required.

The festive manifestations, on the other hand, underwent an important change with the civil war. Throughout the postwar period, a certain essence of the celebrations was recovered due to lack of money, the bouquets were less luxurious and the offerings associated with garden produce resurfaced again.

However, the biggest change in folklore came from the hand of the indianos, and the picas that are currently given are nothing but transmutations of the personalized pikes between Indians. Those who returned to Llanes, after making their fortune in the Americas, wanted their party to be the best of all and they did not think about it when it came to contributing money. In this way, the presence of electric light in the festive environment, the abundance of fliers, the most ornate bouquets or the notorious increase of the beads in the llanisca suits were patterns spread by these returning emigrants.

In the town of Celorio, another appointment with the infinite unique celebrations of the council, hundreds of people come to the coven at the end of August to embody that official and popular rejection that was once professed before black magic. Tradition tells, and it is maintained by its heirs, that a strange, feminine being inhabits the area, capable of speaking with wolves. It was the witch of Bricia, whose steps the inquisition followed attentively and with rancor. The persecuted has become a legend. They say that she is still alive, that year after year she gives voice to an eternal spell, the one that in this village every year serves to introduce the battle between humans and spirits.