The folklorist Ángel Rufino de Haro, better known as The Mariquielorecalled this Thursday the more than a hundred victims that DANA has left so far between the autonomous communities of Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha during its thirty-eighth climb to the bell tower “María de la O” of the new cathedral of Salamanca.
Coming from a Valencian family, Rufino de Haro dedicated himself to traditional climbing, since the Lisbon earthquake of 1755to families who suffer from the scourge of bad weather in part of the peninsula. In fact, from above, he did not hesitate to sing the Valencian anthem to the applause of hundreds of people, fewer than in other editions, gathered in the near Plaza de Anaya and Rúa Mayor.
Accompanied by the folklorist Raúl de Dios, El Mariquelo actually mentioned the three associations of Salamanca to which the ascent was, in principle, dedicated, namely Debra Piel de Mariposa, the Salamanca Association of Acquired brain injury (Asdace) and the Association of relatives of Alzheimer’s patients (AFA Salamanca), reports Ical.
The tradition
The tradition of climbing the Cathedral tower dates back to October 31, 1755, when the earthquake recorded off the coast of Lisbon, Ranked nine on the Richter scale, it caused an earthquake that spread throughout the Castilian and Leonese community. As a result, the inhabitants of Salamanca took refuge in the New Cathedral, completed only 22 years earliersaving themselves from the possible consequences of the earthquake.
Since then, a known family member like “Los Mariquelos” began this ascent to the highest point of the Bell Tower on each anniversary of the earthquake, to thank the New Cathedral would have remained standing and request that the event not happen again. However, and with the final ascension of Fabián Mesonero in 1977 as the last member of the family, the tradition was suspended untilThree years later, Ángel Rufino de Haro took it over.
