The Bajada

The procession leaving Isora

I'm better informed now. The main procession with the statue of the Virgin of the Kings leaves El Dehesa at 5 am, and travels 28 km to Valverde, the capital, arriving at 10:30 pm. But there are lots of side processions. For example, I saw one procession leave Isora with their statue of St. Joseph at 7 am, to meet the main procession at La Cruz de Los Reyes.

It was still dark to begin with, and half light when they danced away up a steep lane out of the village. I was only walking, and I couldn't keep up.

They only have three musical instruments: rather high-pitched flutes, castanets and big, deep drums. When I heard Herreñan music on the telly, I didn't like it at all, because it was far too shrill. I hadn't appreciated that my TV wasn't reproducing the low notes. In real life, the glorious WHUMP! from the big drums balances the flutes perfectly, and you want to dance.

And they do dance. They have people dancing all the way, in shifts. The costumes and dance steps are a little reminiscent of English morris dancers. I believe the tune and costumes vary a little from village to village.

In fact, five processions meet the main one La Cruz de Los Reyes, each with their own statue. It's also where people stop for a picnic lunch.

Then they all travel together, with the villages taking turns for the honour of carrying the Virgin and dancing for her. I caught up with the procession at La Raya de la Mareta, where El Pinar hands over to Isora.


The procession at La Raya de la Mareta

The sun was baking, and I was amazed to see the dancers still going at it with gusto. These people are really fit! Of course, they must have been practising for months, and I expect a lot of them have physical work anyway.


The bajada dancers

Even in the middle of the procession, the crowds were huge. I would have liked to see the arrival at Valverde, where they dance inside the big church, but I didn't fancy my chances of getting a parking space within a couple of miles of the town centre.


The huge crowd at Raya de la Mareta

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Our Lady of the Kings

Right at the western end of El Hierro there's a lovely little hermitage at El Dehesa, where they keep the Virgin of the Kings. This is the patron saint of El Hierro.

In the 16th century, El Hierro was very poor. There wasn't enough water for agriculture, and almost everyone lived by herding goats.

So how come a very poor island got such a beautiful statue?

Well, in 1546 on the night of January 5th there was a tremendous storm, and all the shepherd at that end of the island took refuge in a cave. In the morning of the 6th, they saw a ship anchored at the nearby port of Orchilla. This astonished them, because normally only small boats anchored there. Obviously they must be pirates.

This was a very worrying conclusion, because pirates were known to kidnap islanders to sell as slaves, and the shepherds had nothing to defend themselves with.

They hid, and watched.

But there were only three men on the ship and they looked harmless, even honourable. So when they landed, the shepherds showed themselves, and asked if they needed help.

Oh they needed help! They were on their way to Cuba, and the ship had been badly damaged by the storm. They'd lost most of their provisions, too. In fact, they would certainly have sunk if it weren't for the statue of the Virgin.

The statue was brought out and admired.



At the time, the Flemish workshops weren't quite as good as Michelangelo. Not quite. These poverty-stricken goatherds can't possibly have seen a statue by a professional artist before, and this was a particularly beautiful one. They must have been totally blown away.

The ship stayed for eight days, while it was repaired and re-provisioned. The crew must have needed a break, too.

There are two different versions of what happened next.

The more prosaic one is that the ship's captain gave the shepherds the statue in payment for provisions and help repairing the ship.

The poetic version is that the captain paid with boring old cash, but when he set sail, the wind was resolutely against him. Of course if the wind is absolutely dead against a sailing ship, it can't make any progress, so they had to return to Orchilla.

According to some versions, this happened several times, which was very odd indeed - the trade winds go the other way, especially in winter. Eventually the ship's crew concluded that the statue was meant to stay on El Hierro, so they gave her to the shepherds. And when they set sail that had a strong, steady wind, blowing straight for Cuba.

Either way, the shepherds decided they couldn't keep the statue of Our Lady in a cave, so they took her to the tiny hermitage at La Dehesa, where she's been ever since.

Since she arrive on January 6th, Epiphany, when the Kings come to visit Baby Jesus, she's called the Virgin of the Kings.

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