Festivals, Events and Public Holidays
A look at the festival calendar, with over three hundred annual entries, shows Canary Islanders to be partial to a party or two. Both local and island festivals are mostly of Catholic origin and are certainly enthusiastically observed, although most of the population is not otherwise passionately religious. The largest island festival is without doubt Carnival, celebrated around February or March. Other major events include the vast processions and intricate street decorations of Corpus Christi in May or June and a succession of Romerias, harvest festivals throughout the summer. In addition to these and other major, island-wide festivities, most villages have several local fiestas, including those in honour of their patron saints. These local festivities typically involve parading statues of the saints while setting off rockets to clear their path of demons. Processions tend to be solemn, and the low profile of visitors appreciated, but the mood of evening celebrations is much more boisterous, with live folk music and dancing inevitably included in the programme of events. Some locals, mostly those performing in some way, will usually arrive dressed in folk costumes - women in striped skirts, embroidered lace tops and head scarves; men in linen shirts, red vests and knee-length trousers wrapped with a cummerbund. Traditional instruments, particularly the tambor , a goatskin drum of Berber origin and the timple a small string instrument, are also brought out to accompany castanets and traditional dances. Most towns will have a public holiday around the time of their fiesta. Where these or island-wide public holidays fall near a weekend, extra days are also taken off to make a long weekend. Should a holiday fall on a Sunday, then Monday is usually taken off in lieu. While banks will not be open on public holidays most shops rarely close for more than a day at a time - though they will often implement shorter hours than usual.
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