Festivals and traditions
SANT ANTONI
The Pego festivities begin with Porrat de Sant Antoni del Porquet on January 17th. Formerly this holiday was announced the day before with the ritual of fire. Today, there is still the ancestral tradition of blessing the animals walking three times around the hermitage. Next to this, there is a small fair of traditional candies where we can buy caramelized apples, all kinds of nuts and caramel hammers, among other things.
BAIXADA DEL RUI BULLENT
On Saturday before carnival is celebrated “La baixada del rui bullent” is a relatively young party but despite all, it is a day where all the people join to make a peculiar race. The participants make their own boats using great originality and dexterity. In this way the public sees from the sidewalks how they are going through really ingenious boats, always with the purpose of having fun and enjoying some good moments, of the nature and the charms of the Marjal.
LA CROSTA
With the Crosta, the arrival of Lent is celebrated, and in order to say goodbye to the meat, the pegolins go from Crosta, which is one of the typical meals, where the main ingredients are meat, rice and the egg It is tradition that friends and families will eat the Crosta on the beach or on the mountain.
Carnival
The carnival of Pego are really special, the town is transformed, surrounded by a magic that does not go unnoticed by anyone. Year after year, people from all regions come to Pego because he knows that here you will find parties where everyone participates. It’s a night of unlimited fun where everyone, for a day, is what he has always wanted to be.
LA PINYATA O SOTERRRAMENT DE LA SARDINA
The Pinyata or also called “The burial ground of the Sardine” is the celebration that commemorates the arrival of Lent. Although it is a little less well-known than the Carnival, all those who participate in it are left behind by the energy and euphoria that is revealed. The party begins with a parade of coffins where all are dressed in mourning. Accompanied by music they cross the streets of the town until they reach Pla de la Font. Once there they burn, on a great bonfire, all the coffins while people dance around them. Then the Correfoc begins and in this way the madness and magic of that night begin. Everyone dancing on the street, in the nightclubs and bars, that on a very special day they rent musical sets to inspire people.
It’s a family party, where all visitors feel at home.
FALLES
Les Falles is the Valencian party. This festival has a pagan antecedent, where the spring equinox was welcomed by the symbolism of the fire, which purified the new stage of the presence of evil spirits. Over the years this old manhole burial ground has become a pit of true works of art, as today’s faults are.
EASTER
Pego, like many other towns and villages of the Valencian lands, has been characterized by its religious fervor since the medieval age. Religion, the Christian, who was strengthened with the conquest, and that was enlarged throughout the Middle Ages thanks to the rise of the Church’s power. The origin of Holy Week must be found from the low Middle Ages, probably over the 15th century, and already documented in our archive, from the 16th century. Throughout the 16th century, we find in the Council Records held in the historical archive of Pego, news and references to Holy Week. In the first place, every year for the celebration of Lent, a preacher came to the town, which was usually paid by the municipality or on other occasions by the same rector. The preachers used to be Franciscans who came from the Convent of the Pine of Oliva, since in Pego they remained some years so that they came. Other times, when the budget was missing, he was the rector of the parish who preached during the party.
There is also documentation about the provision of wax for Easter, a wax that was normally taken from Gandia. The lightweight was in charge of telling the jurors the lack and the need to buy them. One of the earliest documented brotherhoods was that of the Blood, that is, what we now know as that of the Ecce-Homo, and its origin can be dated around 1579. This brotherhood worshiped the Holy Sepulcher, who is kept on an altar of the chapel of the Hospital de Pobres de la Vila, where the Chapel of the Ecce-Homo stands today.
Important was also the carved image of Christ of Providence, which due to its attribution to the artist Damià Forment, we talk about an origin around the sixteenth century. As of that moment other brotherhoods arose, which removed their images in procession by the streets of the city, still closed by walls.
The sixteenth century was a century of Christian religion, or rather, a time of colonization, first with the forced conversion of the Moors in 1525 which became then moriscos; and then, with the construction of hermitages outside the Christian village, such as those of Sant Miquel (1566) and Sant Antoni (1570) for the converted and new Christians. In the 17th century the Franciscans came to Pego, and the works of the new Church, on the site that had been the primitive, created by royal order in 1280, were completed.
They were times where the years were filled with religious parties, all of them dedicated to saints and virgins, as well as Holy Week, and the feast of Corpus, which had been celebrated since the sixteenth century: Holy Doctors, Saint Michael, Saint John , All Saints, day of the Assumption, Saints of La Pedra, San Roque and San Sebastián, San Vicente, among others. In the eighteenth century, we have documented a considerable number of brotherhoods, some of which came to Easter: the Virgin Mary, the Blood, the Sacrament (Minerva), Roser, San Roque, San Sebastián, the saints of La Piedra.
The brotherhoods would increase in time, or some disappearing, and the one of the Blood, becoming the landlord of the popular religion as a result of the miraculous appearance of the image of the Ecce-Homo in the dependancies of the hospital of poor people between the 16th and 17th centuries. During the nineteenth century, the celebration was celebrated in honor of the Ecce-Homo, celebrated at the beginning of the month of July. Even, coinciding with the traditional agriculture of mulberry and silk, the famous offerings were made.
Already in the 20th century, in its midst, the panorama of the brotherhoods that has almost lasted until today has been set. In 1950, there were the following: the brotherhood of the Ecce-Homo, that of Christ of Providence, that of Jesus Nazareno, that of the Painter, that of the Oration of the Garden, that of “Christ Flagellation” the one of “Yacente Christ” (work of Jerique Just). All these images were accompanied by the group of Roman soldiers called “Caps de Ferro”, also the dresses and choirs that praised the images. The Sunday party began on Rams and finished on Easter Sunday, the day the celebrated “Encounter” was celebrated. Nowadays, Holy Week in Pego is made up of nine steps or images, which by customary order in the processional hierarchy are the following: Creu dels Trastos, Oration of the Garden, Christ of the Column, Ecce-Homo, Jesus de Medinaceli, Our Lady of Sorrows, Jesus of Nazareth, the Venery and Christ of Providence. Another truly admirable and particular image is that of the Holy Sepulcher, which replaces Ecce-Homo on Good Friday night. To all of them the Pietà, the sculptor Miquel Costa, recently acquired by the City Council will join very soon. Easter is a promise of a traditionally rooted tradition and celebration, where the ancestral brotherhoods and images, the noise of horns and tabals, the smell of candle and the smell of wax, and the processional silence stand out. On Wednesday, the traditional “Salpassa” still celebrates, although
MOROS I CRISTIANS
It is the great party par excellence, it is celebrated at the end of June. The sound of the Trabucks wakes up the town at parties, the comparsas parade into the sound of music. The town takes a medieval atmosphere with the majestic rooms and dresses. This festival precedes the patron saint’s party dedicated to Ecce-Homo.
There are a large number of comparses as “Moros” as Christians. Every year it belongs to one of each band to captain the party, organizing the Embassy that is the most special of the party, where the entrance of the Christian king in the Moorish castle is represented.
Or the parade of “boato” rather than the ostentation or pompa, that is, the most spectacular day of the festival, because dance groups dance to the sound of the morro or Christian music and many surprises more. The last day is the day of the floats. In addition to the parade of the comparsas, other acts are performed such as the medieval market that is located in the Passeig Cervantes, the Children’s Games, the rock concerts.
9 D´OCTUBRE, DIA DE LA COMUNITAT VALENCIANA
El 9 d’octubre els valencians celebrem l’adhesió del País Valencià a la corona d’Aragó, recordant el fet del rei en Jaume I en vèncer, en 1238, les tropes àrabs. Aquesta festa consisteix en mantindre en la nostra memòria la història, les arrels que ens ajuden a comprendre millor el nostre present.
