SARDINE BURIED WITH FULL HONOURS WHILE PGO SWORDFISH SWIMS ON
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Friday February 19 2010
CHICHARREROS filled the streets of Santa Cruz on Friday for the funeral of a giant sardine.
by JAMES TWEEDIE
The baroque funeral cortège of the deceased 10-foot long oily fish wound its way through the narrow streets of the regional capital, accompanied by a phalanx of priests and hordes of lady mourners – most of them men.
One of the more unusual events of carnival calendar, the Sardine's Funeral symbolises the death of the past and the birth of the future.
The sardine has special significance in Tenerife's capital Santa Cruz. Residents bear the derogatory moniker of chicharrero from the time when the town was home to poor fishing folk, who could only afford to eat the worst of their catch – a small species of sardine called a chicharro.
In keeping with the spirit of irreverent political satire which pervades carnival, this year's funeral was turned into an impromptu protest against Santa Cruz council's controversial PGO by-law, which has place the upper floors of 30 per cent of the city's buildings 'fuera de ordenacíon' or outside of planning permission.
Campaigners call the PGO “illegal, irrational, illogical, corrupt and speculative,” alleging that it only benefits property developers close to the mayor and councillors.
The PGO was represented by a paper swordfish. Leaflets depicted the 'Pejo-O' sawing the top off an apartment building, along with leading proponents of the scheme caricatured as insultingly-named species of fish.
posted by James Tweedie @ February 21, 2010
6 Comments:
I want to go to Tenerife. The tourist board should be paying you for this stuff James.
Thanks! The tourist board's publicity is very bland and safe, even though the government partly funds the carnival, the murgas, the transvestite beauty pageant which I missed and all that.
Their last two press releases were one claiming they had got parts of 'Clash of the Titans' filmed here by staging a junket for the location company and another about their presence at a tourism fair in Israel, which I suppose says 'we're working to get you out of the crisis'.
To be fair to the regional and island government, they organise a lot of arts events here and publicise them.
Well it seems to me they need something a little edgier and you could provide it.
It looks and sounds like an amazing place to be.
I saw Clash of the Titans. And ex-girlfriend sent me to see it as a joke when it first came out. Great movie she said. What I saw was a plastecine Cyclops throwing model ships against a cliff, smashing against it in unconvincing puffs of coloured celuloid.(Although the story line was a lot stronger than Avatar's). I suppose the cliff was a Canary Island cliff.
What can you say about Canary Island cliffs then. Are they craggy and yellowing?
A cause de cette famme I also went to see Gone with the Wind in a fit of nostalgia - her favourite film - and it wasn't playing; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was playing. So I watched that instead as Dad had made respectful references to Sam Peckinpath's work. Talk about aversion therapy. Now when I think of that girlfriens I think of a large man in an overall eating a human sausage.
The Clash of the Titans that was filmed here was a re-make, which is coming out in April. It stars Sam Worthington from Avatar as Perseus and Liam Neeson as Zeus. I am guessing that the 1980 Ray Harryhausen version is far superior.
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