Writing/Photo: Sergio Betancort
The Magas contest values the quality and care of the typical costumes worn by the romeras. The candidates were dressed for the occasion on the occasion of the Romería de Los Remedios, which was held last Saturday afternoon. Esther Felipe Viñoly was chosen as Maga Yaiza 2005 at night, a category in which girls over 18 years of age compete. The Children's Maga was Giselle Rodríguez Felipe, chosen among the youngest. And the Senior Maga was Soledad González, in the category for those over 40 years of age.
Inside and outside the stage, everyone was dressed in regional costumes. The public came from the Romería and, of course, no one changed clothes for the afternoon-night event. The candidates registered in a part in which each of them was noted for their name and age. Later they went up on stage, took a turn so that the jury could appreciate their dresses well. In this election, the more and better dressed the girls are, the more points they add to be winners of the contest.
After the parade and during the election of the magas, the Rubicón de Yaiza folklore group and the Guadarfía de San Bartolomé folklore group enlivened the jury's wait with their traditional music.
Once the election and the awarding of prizes to the three winners were concluded, the verbena began with the orchestras "Leñabuena" and "Suso y Familia", which had a large audience of romeros and romeras willing to dance and enjoy a, yes, hot night with breeze directly arrived from the Sahara desert.
On Sunday, the earliest risers of Yaiza woke up at 10:00 am to compete in the Virgen de Los Remedios 2005 duathlon.
At 12:00 noon mass was celebrated in the church and at 12.30 pm the neighbors had the opportunity to dance, in "after hour" mode, with the verbena of the "solajero", so called because there is sun, in broad daylight. The verbena included the foam party, in which everyone danced to the sound of the virguerías of DJ Migüi Roger.
It was not just any water verbena, the foam machine released jets of snow for all those who gathered there. It was especially the children of the municipality, delighted to leave home in a bathing suit to do what they like the most: play with water, or even better... with foam.
At 4:30 pm a Big-Heads workshop had been organized, which was very well received and in which the dolls that will parade today in the town's parade were made.
At 7:00 pm the concert of the Municipal Band of Yaiza took place in the Plaza de Los Remedios, in front of the church, composed of very young people, almost all residents in the municipality.
Triple theater session
With the arrival of nightfall, the curtain was raised on the stage of the Casa Cultura "Benito Pérez Armas" of Yaiza. The theater group "Entre Amigos de Yaiza" performed, no more and no less, than three plays. The first of them was the longest and lasted an hour. The second lasted 45 minutes and the third half an hour. A triple theater session that captivated the audience, to the point that, after more than two hours sitting in front of the stage, they asked for more. The place was overflowing, there were even people standing and the little ones had to sit in front of the first row, on the floor. It was a very hot day and the organizers did not know how the neighbors would react. But not even the suffocating atmosphere of the street prevented the yaiceros from leaving their homes, honoring their enormous fondness for theater.
The first play they performed is entitled "The Promise", the second "Tasca Casa María" and the third "Maybe it has a remedy, darling". The director of the theater group, Magdalena Cáceres, explained in an interview with this newspaper, that she adapts the texts so that her versions always have a touch of humor. She takes the works in the raw and arranges them because they come very serious. They want the plays to be comedies, so the director retouches them: "I pass them to our language" to make them humorous. The Promise, for example, is a book of 2,000 pages and she cut it until it reached an hour of representation. Magdalena keeps the idea, with the final meaning of the work, and then adapts it to the characters and the scenarios that she handles comfortably.
The plot of the first play is about a priest who left the church when he fell in love with a girl and has a rather romantic tone. The second tells the misdeeds that the tavern owner does to her customers. And the third is the spicy icing that closed the dramaturgy show: it tells the story of a deputy mayor who is frustrated because his dream is to be appointed mayor, and this political frustration prevents him from having erections. Due to an incident, it is his turn to be mayor for a week and from the joy he manages to have sexual relations with his wife.
After the weekend, Monday arrived and the expected Play-Back of "Los Peques" of Uga, in the fairground of the Plaza Alameda. The members of the group, who are kids between 5 and 16 years old, in addition to dancing and singing, made a fashion show with clothes that a store gives them for the occasion. All of them, from the youngest to the oldest, showed off their body and their art in this parade of fashion fans. It is one of the activities that concentrates the most public and the performance lasted for more than an hour.