Las Parrandas de Remedios

ARTICLE

LAS PARRANDAS DE REMEDIOS

BY: JULIO A. LARRAMENDI

 About the 200th anniversary of Las Parrandas de Remedios 

Partying in Remedios 

1820 

Father Francisco Vigil de Quiñones (Francisquito), the initiator of the festivities, was concerned. Very worried. The Aguinaldo week was ending, soon the mass of Gallo would be celebrated, and in the cold mornings few parishioners went to church. The collection was negligible. Something had to do. 

That morning, some children who were passing in front of the San Salvador de Horta hermitage - the humble church with boards and a guano roof where he officiated - rolling barrel rings on the dusty street and ringing in infernal noise leaky kitchen pots, gave him the idea . They would be the alarm clocks! 

The initiative spread throughout the Remedios of that time, until in 1871 two Spaniards gave the parrandas the character they still possess and the city was divided into the "contending" neighborhoods of San Salvador and El Carmen. 

2018 

It is four in the morning on December 24 and a movement of stealthy shadows travels the streets. After months of working in secret, choosing the theme they will show, creating the designs for the plaza works, the floats, the costumes and the troupes, setting up the fireworks ... the time has come to assemble all the parts, give life to imagination and display the result of quiet labor. 

Designers, carpenters, electricians, painters, seamstresses, more than dozens of volunteers, join forces and, with the first light of day, their works are born. Two cranes load the huge but delicate pieces of floats and plaza works. Villagers and visitors can glimpse the chosen motifs: The Chronicles of Narnia in the El Carmen neighborhood and the religiosity of Christmas in San Salvador. 

From early on, while his companions are involved in assembling everything prepared for that single day, the troupes invade the park. With the music of drums and trumpets, polkas and rumbas, the dancers shake their bodies; Some wave banners and banners, others frantically twirl the streetlights, with the colors and symbols of their sides. 

In the afternoon, the floats are put on the finishing touches, the lights of the plaza works are tested and a small army distributes their load of rockets and mortars around the park. 

With one voice, the sky is covered with colored lights, fire and smoke. Between tight volleys, brave "soldiers" eager to win the "combat" light by hand, with parsimony and style, the missiles that did not fly. In the middle of a trail of fire, the beauty of the takeoff and the trajectory of the "projectile" could be appreciated. Throughout the night, until dawn, the two opponents take turns deploying their arsenal. 

A break at 12 for the midnight mass. The cathedral is overflowing with believers and onlookers who hear the message of peace and fellowship. 

Thousands of people occupy each space in the park and the surrounding streets, while the characters of the story chosen by each side, decked out in their costumes, settle into the floats to begin the parade. But calling it a parade is an exaggeration: they can only travel a hundred meters, until they turn corners and come face to face, between the two plaza works. Ahead are the troupes, banners, banners and lampposts, wrapped in discharges of mortars and fireworks that erupt from rotating artifacts and devices deployed across the street, in competition with rockets to illuminate the sky. 

At dawn, a final discharge announces the end of the day. The legion of euphoric and weary participants slowly retreat, commenting on the details of the night. Each neighborhood is declared the winner and a few days later coffins walk with the "corpse" of the other. 

These festivities, held in neighborhoods of 18 towns and cities of Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus and Ciego de Ávila, synthesis of secular and contemporary knowledge that will soon turn 200 years old, were included in November 2018 by UNESCO in the indicative list of Cultural Heritage Immaterial of Humanity. As Gladys Collazo Usallán - then president of the National Council for Cultural Heritage - pointed out when thanking this high recognition, it is "a deeply popular festival", in which "Each bearer becomes an artist, a creator of design, the architecture, music, dance, the construction of replicas of monuments and costumes for the characters represented on the floats […] ». 

2020 

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year, so special for Remedios, the party parties will not be held. 

Instead, a series of activities have been organized, one of the most important of which will be the screening of the book “Las Parrandas de Remedios. 200 years of history and tradition ”, by the authors Erick González Bello and Juan Carlos Hernández Rodríguez, under the Ediciones Polymita seal. 

 The volume covers the origin and development of the Remedian parrandas, describes the musical components that comprise it, and shows the plaza works, the floats and the fireworks, essential components for a “good duel” between the two participating neighborhoods.Finally, in the pages of the book, we visit the Museo de las Parrandas and its collections.The work has managed to capture the popular essence of this festival, the only one of its kind in Cuba.

Congratulations Remedios! 

PHOTOS

22+