Candelaria Travel Guide
The Virgin Mary is believed to have shown herself among the townsfolk of Villa Mariana de Candelaria or Candelaria, a city in Tenerife Island that is constantly compared to other Marian pilgrimage sites such as Fatima in France and Guadalupe in Mexico. Nowadays, thousands of devotees from Spain and Latin America regularly gather in the city to celebrate Marian-related festivals or to pay tribute to La Virgen de Candelaria or the Virgin of Candelaria, the patron of the Canary Isles. For non-devotees, the many churches and artworks built in honor of the Virgin Mary, as well as the townsfolk's worship practices, could serve as a good way to look at Canary culture from a different angle.
Festivals devoted to Virgin Mary
August 15 and February 2 are the most important dates of the year in the country as these prompt the times when the Virgin Mary is believed to have performed apparitions back in 1390. During such days, thousands of pilgrims from all over the world celebrate the Festival de la Canción de Candelaria through dressing up in fur capes like the guanches (shepherds of then Güimar Kingdom) and reenacting how those shepherds found the Black Madonna on Chimisay Beach. The reenactment is then followed by dressing up the Virgin Mary's statue with mantles and jewelry before parading the statue around town.
A town of churches
In addition, mass rituals are observed in the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, the Royal Basilica Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Candelaria, or the Basilica of the Candelaria, a ‘50s church built to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims who used to flock to Chimisay Beach, the site of the Sanctuary to the Virgin of Candelaria, where the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared. The church was a former hermitage and has centuries-old sculptures and murals of the Virgin Mary. The Basilica is also included in the country's list of cultural interest sites since its square, the Plaza of the Patron of Canaries, has bronze icons of Tenerife's nine aboriginal kings.
Next to the Basilica is a Dominican convent in charge of the Sanctuary to the Virgin of Candelaria. Somewhere in the town is the Achbinico's Cave, where the Black Madonna was first kept, as well as the bronze statues of shepherds to whom the Virgin Mary appeared in 1390.
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