Friday, March 29

San Jorge warms up engines in Cáceres with the making of the dragons


«It is amazing to go through the city with the streets full of people. Being from Cáceres, the festival of San Jorge touches our hearts. It is a long-awaited and very beautiful day for us, ”says Esperanza Rayo, an Infant teacher at the San Antonio school and a member of the celebration committee of this concerted educational center.

There is little less than a month to go until the celebration of the parade -which takes place on the night of April 22, the day before the festival of Saint George- and the preparations have already begun in neighborhood associations and, above all, in schools such as San Antony. Together they make up the popular procession that accompanies the great official dragon and Saint George on their way to the Plaza Mayor, where the patron saint of Cáceres executes the animal, which falls prey to the flames before the crowd that gathers in the enclosure. It is considered the most legendary night in Cáceres.

The City Council, to encourage citizen participation, calls a contest every year aimed at schools, groups and associations. The registration period opened on March 7 and ended this Friday. The jury will value not only the dragon as such, but also the procession of companions. The costumes, the staging of the entire entourage and the details alluding to the party will score when it comes to aspiring to the prize. The Consistory will grant three awards, of 600, 400 and 200 euros respectively, in addition to a diploma.

Not all the dragons that are being developed these days are new ones. In San Antonio, in fact, they choose to recycle it from one year to the next and update it with new elements.

Susana Llanos, professor of Plastic Arts and History of Art, is in charge of printing these days to the animal, which is five meters long and three meters high, a different aspect. Without going into too many details about what its final appearance will be like, from the center it is advanced that a tribute will be paid to the centenary of the school, an event that took place in 2021 and for which the San Antonio was awarded the Extremadura Medal and with the Caceres Medal.

“The colors of the school will be present in the dragon,” Esperanza Rayo advances in detail. In this way she reveals that black and red will have a special role in this edition. She estimates that the procession will be made up of more than a hundred people. The children of Infantile will go disguised of dragons and the ones of upper courses with medieval costumes.

“At the school we live San Jorge with great intensity,” adds the teacher while remembering that, as there were no parades last year, the center organized its own inside the facilities.

The Ciudad Monumental neighborhood association will hold its own street parade on the afternoon of the 22nd. /

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The last time Cáceres saw his dragon burn was in 2019. It has been three years, therefore, that the parade has not been celebrated. «We are very excited. In this school we have always been very much from San Jorge and people already wanted to celebrate it again, ”says Ana Cristina Solís, a member of the board of directors of the center’s association of mothers and fathers (Ampa), from the public school Pratica Ana Cristina Solís. More than 60 people linked to this central school have signed up to take to the streets on April 22 characterized as Moors and Christians. And next Monday, anticipate, they will buy the material to make their dragon against the clock.

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More advanced is the Moctezuma school dragon, which takes shape in a city ship and whose appearance is kept completely secret. “We have been participating in the parade for six years. We have always dressed up with costumes made by ourselves. Until now we have come out of little dragons and knights, both women and men, because of gender equality. And this year we may introduce another character from the legend of Saint George,” says Susana Sánchez, president of the school’s Ampa.

In Las Carmelitas this year they will also choose to take advantage of the dragon they already had. “A company made it for us and we have set it up for this year,” says Pilar Torrecilla, a teacher at the center while recalling that during the first editions in which the center participated in the parade, it opted for a Chinese dragon. “People are very excited to go out. We live the party with a lot of nerves », she admits.

Recycled materials

These days the students of the center also work on the decoration of another dragon, of smaller dimensions, with recycled materials. In this case, it is an initiative promoted by the Ruta de la Plata shopping center, which has distributed ten dragons to educational centers and which will later be exhibited in the shopping area. The idea is framed within the Origin project.

This Friday was the penultimate session scheduled by the Ciudad Monumental neighborhood association to make their dragon (which they have called Draguela), as well as legendary characters such as Mansaborá and the captain. The idea of ​​the association is to organize its own parade through the neighborhood on the afternoon of April 22, as it did in 2019 with great acceptance among residents.


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