Pilgrimage of Virgen de Piedraescrita
The main feast of Campanario is dressed with floats made by its inhabitants.
Light and colour fulfil the party which involves the inhabitants in the designing
and creation of the floats, as far as music and dance come along with pilgrims
on their way where the written stone was found.
The origin of this celebration is located
at 13th century, when the people of this town found an
Roman funeral stone and a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary just in the
same place.
The Roman stone had a carved text: To Lucio Valerio Fabio Calixto,
Silvano Victello Valeriano: winners.
The statue of the Virgin Mary was so called: Virgin
of Piedraescrita ('written-stone')
From that moment the pilgrimage has evolved to become into the
feast celebrated nowadays .
Celebration begins Easter Monday in the city centre with the
traditional float parade. People use a great amount
of tissue paper, glue, and metal structures and spend about two months to build
up the floats. The extraordinary results led to create a competition to choose
the best one.
Once the parade is over pilgrims go to the hermitage buid to
conmemorate the discovering of the stone and the statue.
There they enjoy in the countryside, and people uses to taste
typical dishes such as cured meat pies called 'jornazo', a dessert decorated
with hard-boiled egg, and the excellent wines of this zone.
On the way back to Campanario people make some stopovers to
sing and dance, there is a compulsory stopover in Piedraescrita Cross.
Back to the town, the celebration goes on with a street party
that ends up in the early morning.
