Lázaro Martín Bermúdez was born and lives next to the Cultural Interest Site of La Candelaria, Tías. He has spent his whole life attached to this church. His father was a sorchante who helped and sang in the masses of celebration and deceased, accompanied by the harmonium, and his mother was the caretaker of the church keys. Lázaro grew up among liturgical ornaments, priests' vestments, altar boy clothes, bells, sermons, the smell of candles, incense, sermons, chants and all the religious events that were celebrated each year. From a very young age, in the time of the Reverend Don José Quintero, he became the holder of the altar boy position, witnessing important religious events, with his inseparable friend and teacher, Don Benigno Díaz Mesa, forming an important "tandem" for the care and maintenance of the Candelaria temple. From him, he also learned to play stringed instruments.
Don José, the priest, had acquired a machine to project films, and Lázaro, in his youth, provided his services to the Parish and worked as an operator in the different towns where the parish films were projected, without abandoning his functions in the church: preparations for the patron saint festivities of La Candelaria, the Stations of the Cross of the Passion of Jesus in Holy Week, the novenas of May to the Virgin of Fatima and the flowering of the towns. He actively participates in the events of the Centenary of the Parish, in the maintenance of the church in carpentry, varnishing, painting, thrones and, later, in the eighties, he collaborated with Benigno in the monitoring of the works that are undertaken on the first square of the church.
December is a special month for Lázaro, the date of his birth (December 17) and the day of San Lázaro. Christmas in La Candelaria fascinates him, he lives it and it entertains Lázaro. As a member of the Rancho de Pascua since his childhood, he began by playing the tambourine, then the requinto, he played at the Midnight Mass for New Year's and Epiphany. At first they could only perform at the door of the church until Don José allowed them to enter the "besapié". As a child he helped to make the Nativity Scene from a month before Christmas, with Don Bernardo Arroyo, an official of the Justice of the Peace, he helped him to bring the stones (he would have been about five years old) and since then he enjoys making the Portal, year after year, and Lázaro, too, was a carpenter like Saint Joseph. He makes the Nativity Scene in a self-taught way, the manger, the figures, the mill, the Ferris wheel, the threshing floor and the threshing. He speaks to them and gives life to the figures and, as these dates approach, as they say at home: LÁZARO IS NO LONGER HERE, HE MOVED TO THE CHURCH OF LA CANDELARIA, HE LIVES IN THE HEART OF THE PORTAL.
