A Guide to Local Celebrations and Traditions

celebrations & traditions

The municipality is rich in expressions of Fuerteventura folklore. This was always maintained in the parrandas (songs) of patron saint festivals, social gatherings and the songs of the grain sowing and harvesting seasons. The stories and legends are laden with magical references, especially around Tindaya. Traditions related to religions live on, such as Rancho de Ánimas en Navidad in the town of La Oliva.

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One day in August, a torch-lit procession bears the Virgen del Buen Viaje at dusk from El Cotillo hermitage to El Roque. As in all of the Canary Islands, the summer solstice is lit up by San Juan bonfires, especially in Vallebrón, where the San Juan Bautista y Nuestra Señora de Gracia celebration is held on 24 June. Corralejo celebrates its fiestas del Carmen in July by decorating the small boats and “falúas” that transport the virgin across the sea. The Virgen del Buen Viaje, in El Cotillo, is carried in procession by the fishermen, and during the local celebrations use of banned fishing techniques is allowed such as trammel nets, that is to say three layers of netting tied together in which fish become trapped. The fish is then spit roast with locals and foreigners taking part, and parrandas are sung spontaneously.

dont miss the festival of the kites

In summer Tindaya celebrates Nuestra Sra. de la Caridad, El Roque San Martín de Porres, Villaverde San Roque, and La Caldereta Los Dolores, while Lajares celebrates San Antonio. La Oliva celebrates Nuestra Sra. de la Candelaria in February. In October, the avocation of the Virgen del Rosario is commemorated. The winter festival par excellence is the participatory and colourful La Oliva Carnaval, which is held in March each year. During these days Corralejo becomes the shop window for the imagination and happiness of its residents.

As for typical cuisine, worth mentioning in the coastal areas are limpets in spicy green mojo sauce, stewed or dried mussels, octopus, stewed, dried and seasoned or fried parrot fish and so on, with a side dish of the popular papas arrugadas (small boiled potatoes served in their jackets) in mojo sauce, that together with fish stew are the most traditional dishes. The main dish at festival time is puchero (a hearty meat and vegetable stew) with goat’s meat, chickpeas and vegetables. Lentils, chickpeas, green peas and so on are the essential ingredients of potajes (vegetable stew), the basic foodstuff for centuries. Goat’s cheese acquires different flavours depending on which “hands” have made it. Tunos (pear-shaped fruit of the prickly pear cactus) and figs, once abundant as a food supplement, can still be enjoyed in certain places and at certain times of year.

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Everything is accompanied by gofio in its small variants: Pella de gofio (paste made from corn and wheat four and rolled into balls), gofio escalado (gofio prepared in boiling water or fish broth) with milk, with oil and sugar, etc. It was the island’s bread for several centuries.

After the Lord and the Pure Virgin/Usia is the God of Fuerteventura. The creation of the island militia regiment in 1708 increased the strength of a military rank that was to acquire enormous political, and with it economic, power: the Colonel Governor of Arms. From the beginning this position was monopolised by the Sánchez Dumpiérrez y Cabrera family, and by the end of the 18th century they had amassed the largest fortune on the island.

At the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century they became the real owners of the island and set up a kind of military capital in La Oliva with its headquarters in the house-palace known as the “Casa de los Coroneles” (House of the Colonels). From 1742 on the King of Spain awarded the title of Colonel of the island, granting it in this case to Melchor Cabrera Bethencourt. Agustín de Cabrera Bethencourt Dumpiérrez was appointed Colonel in 1766, bringing together all the military lineages on the island in a single person and achieving the greatest economic strength of the family. His only daughter, Sebastiana de Cabrera Bethencourt Dumpiérrez, would marry Francisco de Asís Lorenzo Manrique de Lara, who was to become the next Colonel.

Their son, Cristóbal María de los Dolores Manrique de Lara y Cabrera would be the last Colonel in 1834. With his death in La Oliva in 1870, the last colonel of Fuerteventura’s militias disappeared.