A festive calendar that covers all the months of the year
HOLY WEEK IS THE CELEBRATION PAR EXCELLENCE IN BAENA
Most of the festive celebrations in Baena enjoy a great tradition that transcends local limits and attracts numerous visitors willing to participate directly in them or to contemplate them as unique shows.
Baena has centenary celebrations of great popular roots
The festive calendar of the town begins in the first days of the year with the long-awaited Three Kings Parade that usually attracts children and adults from all over the region since there are 20 floats that usually go through the streets of the town distributing gifts and making the illusion of the little ones. However, it will be the arrival of Lent that will really mark the beginning of the traditional Baenenses celebrations, highlighting its Misereres and other events such as the celebration of the eve of San José,between the afternoon of March 18 and the early morning of March 19, when the city becomes a bustling hotbed of drums making the tour of the “candelorios” or bonfires that are lit in different streets of the old town. This genuine and characteristic sound of the drum will be a constant during Holy Week , the most famous of the local celebrations that is in the process of being declared of International Tourist Interest.
Spring also brings the flowering of the olive tree, a fact of singular importance in an area whose agricultural economy is essentially based on this crop. It will be the second Sunday of the month of May when the chapter of the Brotherhood of Friends of the Olive Tree takes place , where ambassadors are appointed to those who in one way or another have excelled in the defense or dissemination of Baena extra virgin olive oil.
Olive growers and, in general, all farmers, will celebrate their patron saint, San Isidro, on May 15, with a procession that will go through different streets of the old town, as will the monumental Custody of silver in the following month. the celebration of Corpus Christi ,where in addition to the boys and girls who have made their first Communion that year, a representation of the different brotherhoods and brotherhoods of Baena parades.
The pilgrimages of the Virgen Blanca on May 1 at Puente de Piedra and of the Virgen de Fátima in the district of Albendín, which is celebrated on the dates close to May 13, are two Marian celebrations that will be complemented by cults in honor to the Virgen de la Cabeza that will take place in the week following Corpus Christi.
The festive summer begins with the Virgen del Carmen , on July 16. Albendín will hold a seafaring procession in the Vadomojón reservoir and in Baena, the Llano de Santa Marina, next to the Castle, is carpeted with colored sawdust, while other streets in the same Almedina neighborhood are adorned with pots, flowers and shawls from Manila.
During the months of July and August, festivals will take place in the different neighborhoods . Some, such as the Jubilee, in the first days of August, and the Chickpea Festival, in the middle of the same month, have an ancient origin, while others, such as the Parque de la Cañada or the Haza del Reloj, are much older. recent. Even so, both one and the other contribute to presenting a festive summer every year where there is no shortage of flamenco festivals and some truly unique events such as those that the Iponubensis Association carries out in the Torreparedones archaeological park on the nights of the full moon in August and September.
It is precisely in this last month when religious acts are carried out and the festival in honor of the patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe , which takes place on the 8th . Shortly after, on the 14th, the celebration of Jesus Day takes place, which begins the day before with the burning of a firework display and continues the following day with a massive procession, a devotional reflection to the Nazarene of a large number of Baenenses.
The festive cycle of September continues with the procession of the Virgen de las Angustias accompanied by the Roman century (band of bugles and drums) of her name, which is one of the oldest in Andalusia, having been founded in 1922.
The Cofrade Tapa Fair and the Wine Tasting will precede the Royal Fair in the first week of October. A playful event in which horses, faralaes costumes and traditional atmosphere come together in the booths along with numerous attractions and a great atmosphere in the area of the Ramón Santaella park and in the Juncal park.
Finally, the Christmas festivities have lately been acquiring a high degree of citizen participation as there are numerous residents who participate in the nativity scene contest (some of them highly professional) and in the street and shop window decorations that enliven the city and attract to visitors from all over the region willing to discover the creativity of the neighborhood in the surroundings of their respective neighborhoods.
