In La Florida the big festival of San Antonio Abad had to be canceled this year. Nevertheless there was vegetable stew for the residents: this year at home
Tenerife – Every year on the last weekend of January, the town of La Florida in La Orotava celebrates its patron saint, San Antonio Abad. In addition to the island-wide cattle fair, the traditional costume ball “Baile de Magos” and the folklore parade “Romería”, the festivities include a very special tradition: the preparation of a huge amount of vegetable stew, puchero in Spanish. Not only the residents of La Florida, but also thousands of visitors from outside the town come to La Florida each year to eat a plate of puchero.
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Many helpers filled the boxes with the ingredients for the stew so that on January 30th, every household in La Florida smelled of puchero. Photos: noticia -
Many helpers filled the boxes with the ingredients for the stew so that on January 30th, every household in La Florida smelled of puchero. Photos: noticia
Cooking takes place on open fireplaces in huge pots. How amazing the amount of stew actually is is shown by the number of servings distributed last year: 5,000. In addition, there were just as many rations of dressed gofio, or “escaldón”, which is typically eaten with it.
This year the pandemic threatened to prevent the festival for the first time. But the zealous local residents’ association, who took care of the alignment, could not be beaten and found an alternative solution. If the cattle fair, Baile and Romería had to be canceled due to the corona, at least the tradition of the puchero should be maintained. So they started a collection campaign to put together boxes of vegetables; with considerable success. Even if the donations were not as large as in previous years, word of the campaign spread quickly and more and more contributions from farmers were received. So in the end 500 heads of cabbage, 700 kilos of chayotes, 450 kilos of bubango as well as several kilos of carrots and many pumpkins, eggs, leeks, parsley etc. came together with which the boxes could be filled. These were then distributed to the residents so that each household could prepare their own puchero for the feast day, January 30th.
Delia Escobar, head of the La Orotava tourist office and resident of La Florida, was on the road the days before and helped with the distribution of the boxes with her private car. She told the newspaper “El Día” that the inventiveness and commitment of the residents of La Florida to preserve this tradition was astonishing. For those residents who do not have much cooking skills, a video was even recorded describing the step-by-step preparation of the stew.
