S'Àvia Corema

Spotted this dude today in the Town Hall lobby. Aparently the giant effigy gets an airing each Saturday of Lent, bizarrely having one of her seven feet removed each time. I will try to see this next week. It´s a uniquely Menorcan tradition, and was not easy to find information about it. Here´s a hilarious translation by Google, not me:-

Every Saturday of Lent a giantess called Grandma Corema wanders the streets of Mahon and through a popular vote, losing one of the seven legs it has.

This is how the character of our cultural tradition has left the road to oblivion for staging a unique celebration that will delight young and old. In the traditional calendar hit disbauxes finished the Carnival Lent, a period of about seven weeks into what the Christian church recommends different types abstinence, meditation and contemplation, a time of preparation for Easter begins. One of the customs associated with this period is to count the days until that runs through an old calendar represented by a seven-foot, known by many names: Lent, Saracen, Patorra, Grandmother Corema ... who starts every week foot in Mahon (Menorca)

This popular character of our cultural tradition has left the road to oblivion for staging a unique event: every Saturday in Lent a giantess walks through the streets and through a popular vote, losing one of the seven legs it has. In 2004 the City of Mao decided to create a new celebration for that reinventing the ancient custom of counting down the days until Easter.

For this reason he built a giant 65 kg and three feet in elevation, called the Grandmother Corema representing Lent. The giantess, wearing a blue dress and white checkered robe and oranges, codfish and oil to one hand and a rosary in the other, does not too good looking, probably because in the popular imagination Lent has good predicament.

The giantess, the main feature of which is that it is seven feet which can dislodge easily from the body, was built by mataronins Catou Verdier and Josu González fiber, foam, expanded polystyrene and wood, and was released on February 8, 2005 . Since then, every Saturday of Lent leaves the council, makes a parade to a place of Mao and there are rips one of seven feet you have.

The sequence of this ritual celebration begins on Ash Wednesday, the day of burial "Camestortes", a name which in Mahon Carnival is known. This day the undertaker's widow, escolanet, the priest and the civil and military authorities, together with the mayor and members of the local police, all of farce, staged the most fun and crazy year of the Maonès Enterrament: The Burial of Camestortes .

The ceremony begins at Mahon Hall lobby, where the Funeral of Camestortes occurs, continues the satirical reading the decedent, a dead well alive who keeps dancing and messing around on his coffin, and ends with a procession funeral through the streets of the village. Since 2005 the Burial of Camestortes coincides with the arrival of the giant Grandma Corema, which is installed on the balcony of City Hall. From this day, every Saturday morning the same rites are repeated.

The gang was responsible for the giant to dance, Giants Mahon, meet at the Parish Plan (Constitution Square), before the City Council and the Church of Santa Maria, along with a large group of parents with their small fry. There take the giantess and a lively parade by heading to a place of Mao, every Saturday a different. In recent years have been well chosen places throughout the city, so that everyone could see the front of Grandma Corema Plaza del Carme, Bastion Square, Square Colom, Plaza Real, Park is Freginal, Plaza del Principe and Plaza Conquest.

The delegation, very large, it is accompanied by the Great Pepot, a character who opens the way and spread the spirit of the party among the participants and a group of musicians who play the traditional song of the day, the Song Granny Corema that ago: "Grandma Corema, small foot, land and shits pixa sa bed."

Grandmother Corema, fat feet, shits rice flour and pixa.