Everyone ends up sweating and wasting paint, but they have a good time. It’s the party of CroupsProperty of cultural interest, declared of international tourist interest, aspiring to be declared intangible heritage by UNESCO and which brings together thousands of people every year. It starts this Friday, September 6 at Active and ends next Monday at Guadix. The one from Cascamorras is a story that deserves to be told.
Starts in the year 1151when the Almohads, who then dominated these two regions of Granada, destroyed a Mozarabic hermitage that was located in La Churra, on the outskirts of Baza. In 1470, when this territory had already been conquered by the Catholic Kingswas rebuilt to house the church of La Piedad.
In these tasks, Juan Pedernala worker from Guadix, claims to have heard a voice saying: “Have mercy”. He began to search and found a sculpture of a virgin, which almost immediately received the name Our Lady of Mercy.
Pedernal wanted to take her to his city, arguing that he was the one who had found her, but he did not succeed. The virgin remained where she was found and the man, far from resigning himself, found himself shortly after in Baza accompanied by a strange character dressed in something. resembling a jester or a harlequinthe Cascamorras.
More than five centuries of funny failures
Failure. The Bastetans, as those of Baza are called (those of Guadix are Accitani), prevented him and smeared them with good. They told Pedernal that if he ever managed to take the immaculate image of the church of pietyWherever he is, he could stay forever in Guadix. But that never happened. The Cascamorras never came out of their expedition unscathed.
For more than 500 years, every year, the first weekend of September has been used to repeat history, which also has a second assault, so to speak, in Guadix. On September 9, the Cascamorras return to Guadix without the desired size and there they receive him as in Baza, throwing paint at him. It is not toxicThank God.
You might think that Cascamorras is a character to be mocked, that this jester is ridiculed. But in Guadix, they don’t see things that way, far from it. Be the person chosen to represent the harlequin It’s quite an honor. In Guadix, after pouring all the paint within reach, the neighbors cheer him and pay him homage. In Baza there is a statue in his honor.
The attempt at recovery (doomed to failure, it can be taken for granted) will take place this afternoon, at 1 p.m.8:00 a.m.and this will be the starting signal for the Baza festivities, which will last until the 15th. In Guadix they have just ended, but there is no doubt that they will resume on Monday the 9th when their unfortunate hero returns without the virgin.
