Fiestas del Pilar

The Fiestas del Pilar are an annual festival celebrated in the city of Zaragoza, Spain, in honour of the patron saint of the city, the Virgen del Pilar (Virgin Mary of the Pillar). The week long festival takes places every year, usually, beginning the weekend of or before October 12, and lasts until the following Sunday.

A wide variety of events are organized by the City Hall, with private companies and organizations organizing their own sponsored events, shows, contests, and other activities.

The main events in the festival include:

The first Mass of the day, on October 12, is the Solemne Misa de Infantes, or Solemn Mass of Infants, celebrated in the Saint Chapel of the Basilica del Pilar, at 4.30 a.m. Despite the early hour, the Mass is extremely popular, and exceptionally well attended.

This is the high point of the festival, and a demonstration of the people’s devotion to the Virgin Mary. Throughout the day of the 12th of October, thousands of people dressed in traditional costume, leave flowers at the statue of the Virgin, which has a place of honour in the middle of the Plaza del Pilar. There, an army of volunteers arrange flowers in a pyramidal form, creating a flower mantle around the base of the statue, which remains in the square for the duration of the festival for public viewing. People can participate in the flower offering individually, or as a group. Typically, groups are organized by schools, companies, villages and other entities, and they organize their own parades around the local streets and neighborhoods ending up at the main square.

The popularity of the Offering of Flowers in Zaragoza is evidenced by the large number of groups that take part each year (378 groups in 2005) and the duration of the parades, which can usually last for over eight hours. In 2009, a record number of 450,000 people took part in the flower parade.

The Flower Offering tradition started in 1952, when a group of City Hall functionaries went on a field trip to visit a festival outside of Zaragoza, in Castellón de la Plana. Based on what they had witnessed there, they decided to embark on creating a similar festival for Zaragoza, which they launched in 1958.

Around the Virgin's mantle, the Cross of Lorraine is usually depicted with red flowers against a background of white flowers, a two-tiered cross, insignia of the original crusader Templar Hospitallers Order of Jerusalem. This cross of flowers is an offering made by the local General Royo Villanova Hospital, a tradition they started in 1960, on behalf of incurable patients suffering from tuberculosis who were unable to attend. The hospital's Cross of Flowers is placed at the mantle, in a formal ceremony, by the Queen of the Festival and her Court of Honour.

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Wikipedia