The Maspalomas Regional Folklore Festival returns to the San Fernando Festival

 

The Department of Celebrations and Events of the San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council, headed by Councilor Francisca Quintana, recovers, twelve years later, the Maspalomas Regional Folklore Festival.

 

The Festival had been held uninterruptedly from 1981 to 2011, becoming one of the oldest and most consolidated traditional music gatherings in the entire Canary Islands. Not in vain, he was considered in his day as the dean of folklore musical gatherings on the Islands.

 

For Mayor Conchi Narváez, “we are reactivating all those cultural initiatives born from the very essence of our town of San Bartolomé de Tirajana. "Recovering this festival constitutes giving a boost to our cultural heritage, not only maintaining our most deeply rooted traditions but also promoting them inside and outside our borders."

 

The Maspalomas Regional Folklore Festival, according to one of its founders, Pedro José Franco López, "was born enthusiastically, with no intention of continuity and, by popular initiative, on May 30, 1981 (Canary Islands Day), it was carried out as another act that coincided with the Program of the Patron Saint Festivities of Maspalomas, in honor of San Fernando”.

 

 

An initiative that arose from the same town of Maspalomero, which had the advice and sponsorship of Fernando Díaz Cutillas, Nanino, who presented it until 1988.

 

In the first edition, it was Nanino himself who, along with Paco Montesdeoca, also a television presenter, acted as hosts of the event. Starting with the eighth edition, different figures from Canarian folklore and traditions present the Festival until, finally, the organization requests advice from the prestigious ethnographer Pedro Grimón, who ends up coordinating it in successive editions.

 

In the words of Councilor Quintana, “with the celebration of this Festival, the council intends to value the work of the different groups and promote activities around our traditional culture, which contribute to the maintenance and promotion of our identity as a people.” .