Polvo and Pearls: Los Indianos in La Palma

It's been quite a March already! As you probably know, Spain loves their festivals, and I had the opportunity to go to another island, La Palma, and celebrate one of the biggest festivals in the country: Los Indianos. I went with another Fulbright grantee, Desiree, who is living on Tenerife, and it was a great big party!

Desiree and I flew from Tenerife to La Palma on Friday evening, and made our way to our hostel way out of the city. Finding housing was an adventure; there is nothing under €500 anywhere in Santa Cruz de La Palma because this festival is the biggest event of the year for the island. But we managed to find a very cute little hostel (with a private room!) in El Paso, about 40 minutes driving towards the center of the island and through some impressive mountains. We had a very soft bed and lots of thick wool blankets. :D For dinner, we found an arepería, a Latin American restaurant that serves arepas, corn tortillas with meat and cheese that are divine and very Canario. I tried a cachapa for the first time, a sweet corn pancake filled with chicken, avocado, and white cheese. A great end to the day!

The next morning, we got up bright and early with just our tiny daypacks (for once I managed to pack pretty light :D) and saw a little bit of the town we had stayed overnight in, including a lovely church and some interesting metal art that looked like funny little people. We also bought baby powder in the supermarket and got prepped for our big day.

We needed to catch a bus from El Paso to Santa Cruz de La Palma, the center of the festival. This usually would be no problem, but all the buses were running late and jammed full because everyone on Earth (as we say in Spanish, todo el mundo) was trying to get to Santa Cruz at the same time, all dressed beautifully in white. Our bus arrived 15 minutes after it was scheduled and was packed wall to wall, with people shoved up against the window--the driver drove by with a grim shake of his head. Fortunately, we had the ultimate ally--angry older local women who (after yelling at the first bus driver about injustice) called the bus station and had them send a bus just for us! So it all worked out and we made it to Santa Cruz just as the party was starting.

Los Indianos is a festival to commemorate the Spaniards who emigrated to the Americas during the colonization in the 1500s. Many people left Spain (and La Palma in particular) to make their fortune in places like Cuba or Venezuela and came back years or generations later. Everyone at the festival wears fancy white clothes, complete with lots of lace, wide-brimmed hats, long dresses, shawls, and jewelry. Many people even have fake money falling out of their pockets, since the returning immigrants had made their fortune in the New World. Most interestingly, we all throw white power--baby powder--at each other all day and night. There are outside bars set up all throughout the city, with DJs and bands playing music, and it is just a great big outdoor party with 50,000 friends (about triple the city's normal population).

Binter Airlines was a sponsor of the festival, handing out cans of baby powder to throw in their name, as well as having flags in their colors and taking Polaroid pictures.

Desiree and I wandered all over the city that day! We went to the main square, where people were jammed shoulder to shoulder, getting absolutely covered in white and watching musicians and dancers. Everyone with a drink had a cover and a straw, but I still feel like a lot of baby powder was ingested :)

One thing that surprised me was that the powder-throwing was a non-stop event. I have been to Holi celebrations before, with colored powder, but those have always had very clear color zones and color times--a scheduled event where everyone in one square throws powder, and then the colors are over. Here, it was non-stop! People would be walking past you, decide you didn't have enough powder, and just shake a ton in your face. A wild time!

I got to see a little bit of Santa Cruz, although it was really taken over by white powder. But there was some lovely architecture and I tried the traditional drink of Los Indianos, a mojito made with local fruit and fresh sugarcane right off the stalk.

We not only got covered with powder--we threw our fair share too!

Every street transformed into an outdoor concert.

We took lots of pictures of ourselves in various states of being covered in baby powder.

Some of the outfits were stunning, white linen suits, straw hats, beautiful lace dresses, stunning wedding hats, and fashionable sunglasses galore!

The Spanish are huge fans of the all day all night party. We arrived to Los Indianos around 10am and went all the way until 4:30am the next morning. Whew! The festival had lots of families with small children (and even a couple dogs!) during the day and turned into a bit more of a party scene at night, with different bars blasting different types of music along the streets. Many people had constructed these carts (like the cannon below) to store all their drinks and snacks in. Plus, the cannon could be loaded and shoot a bomb of baby powder into the crowd.

It was a great day and night throwing powder, people watching, listening to music, and dancing, but when I made it to the ferry around 5am, I slept like a baby!

¡Hasta la próxima!