Photos: Sergio Betancort
The tourist center of Playa Blanca intensely experienced this Saturday the largest collective revelry of its Carnival. Countless masked people, fifteen floats, twenty groups and hundreds of spectators, many of them also in disguise, took to the streets to enjoy and be infected by that route full of music, color, ingenuity and frenzy that entails the carnival parade of southern Lanzarote.
To the rhythm of batucada, comparsa, charanga, murga, merengue and electronic music, the parade was generous in the variety and quality of costumes and fantasies. In Playa Blanca there were not only costumes as striking as they were elaborate, but also individual and group stagings that were comical and a tribute to great music idols.
The parade exhibited costumes allegorical to the marine world inspiring the 2017 Carnival, thus, in that imaginary background enjoyed clown fish, jellyfish, sea urchins, crabs and also divers with enough air in their bottles to endure the journey from Playa Flamingo to Plaza del Carmen, passing through a crowded Avenida de Canarias, Calle Jaime Quesada and Avenida Papagayo. The mayoress of Yaiza, Gladys Acuña, the Councilor for Festivities, Javier Camacho, and councilors of the Corporation participated in the tour.
Also in the parade you could see Indians, clowns, chicks or hens, depending on the age, old-fashioned rockers, the hippie movement remembering its very popular symbol of peace and love, there were also superheroes, athletes, queens, old women, warriors and costumes that more than costumes are an ingenious and humorous representation of everyday life.
The vines of La Geria took a break after the hail that in days past covered the landscape and miraculously appeared in Playa Blanca full of fruits long before the time of harvest. A sea snail crawled along Avenida Papagayo seeming to desperately search for the town's beach while its human companions were cracking up.
All the masked people, children, young people and adults, the floats, the toque and dance groups and companions, all without exception, are the true creators of the Carnival, to whom the Yaiza City Council transfers the great merit of building a party for the enjoyment of residents and tourists. The municipal government also thanks the work of the Civil Protection groups of Yaiza, Tías and Arrecife, and that of Emerlan, of course, the work of the Local Police of Yaiza, the Civil Guard and the Autonomous Police who, after the parade, participated in the security device during the verbena.