It’s the start of a new year. Traditional Tinerfeño rainbow-coloured skirts are being ruffled, horses harnessed up and batucada drums beaten. The fiestas are about to start coming thick and fast and if you don’t want to miss out on Tenerife’s most exuberant, colourful and occasionally mind-boggling parties it’s worth taking note of Tenerife Magazine’s guide to the top ten fiestas on Tenerife.
1: Carnaval on Tenerife
It’s big, brash, over the top fun and it’s the ideal time for any closet transvestites to take to the streets in their wife’s slinkiest little black number without giving their secret away. Actually, this is the time when you look odd if you’re not cross-dressing. It’s a hedonistic week of parades and tripping the light fantastic at all-night street parties; if you’re still alive at the end, you haven’t fully embraced Carnaval.
(Best Locations: Santa Cruz and Puerto de la Cruz; between 12th and 21st February)
2: Semana Santa
The complete opposite to carnival, Semana Santa (Easter Week) is a solemn, emotional affair. Silent processions of religious brotherhoods dressed in pointed hooded cloaks add poignancy to historic streets. The fact that their cloaks resemble those of the Ku Klux Clan only adds to a slightly unsettling, but unforgettable experience.
(Best Location: La Laguna; Good Friday, 2nd April)
3: Fiestas of the Cross
Crosses all over the island are beautifully decorated, but the real action takes place in the air for this fiesta. It’s claimed that Europe’s biggest firework display, lasting three hours, takes place at Los Realejos. It does go on for three hours, but there’s a bit of poetic license about how long the actual firework displays last. Whatever the reality, it’s still a spectacular show.
(Best Location – Los Realejos; 3rd May)
4: Corpus Christi
It’s flower-power time on Tenerife as the streets of La Orotava are filled with ornate and colourful floral carpets. Tenerife’s most beautiful looking and smelling fiesta attracts people from all over the world and is a spectacle not to be missed. The pièce de résistance is the immense sand tapestry in front of the town hall, the biggest of its kind in the world. This work of art is created using only sand and soil from the Mount Teide crater, which will blow you away”¦ if the wind doesn’t blow it away first.
(Best Location ““ La Orotava; 3rd June)
5: Night of San Juan
Magical midsummer is the time for all sorts of mystical shenanigans. You can either head into the hills and jump over fires for good luck (the good luck comes from not being barbecued in the process). Alternatively, the more chilled-out option involves drinking and eating on the beach to the sound of live bands until midnight. Then it’s time to strip off and take to the midsummer water which is supposed to have magical healing powers.
(Best locations – San Andrés and Puerto de la Cruz; 23rd June)
6: Virgen del Carmen
The fishermen’s fiesta takes place in fishing communities all over the island in mid July. It’s an excuse for a day of partying and fun involving lots of water before statues of the Virgen are loaded onto fishing boats and taken for a mini cruise. In bigger towns it can be boisterous fun, not for the faint hearted and ends up resembling one massive wet t-shirt competition (okay, I bet some people have suddenly developed an interest in the island’s traditions).
(Best locations ““ all over Tenerife; around the 16th July)
7: RomerÃas
These colourful harvest processions involving elaborately decorated carts drawn by oxen take place throughout the year, but one of the nicest takes place in one of Tenerife’s most picturesque towns, Garachico. It’s an overdose of traditional music, costumes, cowpats and – get this – free food and wine.
(Best location ““ Garachico; 16th August)
8: Hearts of Tejina
One of the smaller fiestas in a place way off the beaten track just happens to be one of the most bizarre. Giant hearts are constructed from fruits, vegetables and pastry and paraded through the streets to the sounds of verbal abuse from rival “˜heart’ carriers. This tops the odd category.
(Location ““ Tejina, La Laguna; Sunday closest to 24th August)
9: San Andrés
The patron saint of Scotland set an example which has been re-enacted many times over; arrive on the island, get bladdered and pass out. Nowadays the fiesta dedicated to him is an excuse to partake of some new wine and, depending on its potency, maybe slide down a steep hill on a steel tray.
(Best locations ““ Icod de los Vinos & Puerto de la Cruz; 29th November)
10: New Year
Other people might include the Tres Reyes parades, but the Nochevieja (New Year) celebrations on Tenerife are as good as any you’ll find anywhere else in the world. Spectacular firework displays, street parties with thousands of people in evening dresses and DJs sexily salsa-ing till dawn make it a night, and probably a hangover, to remember
(Best locations ““ all over Tenerife; 31st December)
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