Festival of the Mayas of the Community of Madrid
Asset of Cultural Interest in the category of Cultural Event
The festival of the Mayas, which is celebrated at the beginning of May in Colmenar Viejo, El Molar, Leganés and in the Lavapiés neighborhood of Madrid, dates back to the XNUMXth century and is an example of traditions alive in the Community of Madrid.
The festival celebrates spring with the symbol of La Maya, a girl or young woman from the town or neighborhood who presides over the popular celebrations, sitting on an altar built for this purpose with ephemeral materials.
The celebration brings together a set of social uses, oral traditions, rituals, festive events and craft practices of great representativeness and symbolism for the residents of these towns, which has led to its declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest.
Mayan Celebration
In the Community of Madrid there are several formulas for celebrating spring: the Mayo tree, the marriage of Mayos and Mayas, the song El Mayo and the Maya festival. In the latter case, the festival revolves around the celebration of Spring through an icon, the Maya, which has historically been part of these celebrations until today.
The Mayas may be accompanied by a procession of girls who address the people with a brush and a tray and, while making the gesture of cleaning their sleeves, they ask "for the Maya, who is pretty and gallant", a ritual formula preserved since The modern age.
The altars of the maya constitute a complex creation made in situ with ephemeral materials, mainly plants and decorative objects, with the exception of some fastening elements that are preserved from one year to the next.
La Maya presides over the party and in her characterization the girls must remain seated, very serious, without speaking, static. It is intended to create distance through a hieratic figure, completely isolated from everyday life. A character is created without any relation to her environment, lonely, silent, a figure of "power" located on a higher plane.
In Colmenar Viejo the altars of the Maya are built predominantly with vegetables that must be collected beforehand. The flower picking It is done the day before the celebration, on May 1. Black broom, hawthorn or hawthorn, lavender or thyme of the Lord, magarza, mallows, viborera, honeysucker, rosemary, poppies, among other species, are collected.
La ephemeral architecture The altar is made with arches and supports, where meshes and trellises are placed to support the textiles and embed flowers and plants. In the background, quilts are placed and in front a wooden support, as a table, covered with the best sheets from the beehive embroiderers. On this table is placed the seat of the Maya, generally a chair made of wood and cattail that can also be covered with textiles that are the heritage of local families.
The protagonist, Maya, is chosen by consensus among the mothers and fathers of the group, is traditionally dressed in embroidered petticoats, a white shirt and a manila shawl tied behind her back. The shawl is placed inside out showing the embroidery and the fringe.
The girl who represents Maya must remain seated and static. The space, which distances and protects the Maya, is inaccessible. The exception is the court of the Maya, the girls who accompany this figure, who are the only ones who can enter the reserved space of her altar and remain there; they do move, gesticulate, laugh, talk to people and play an active role and make up a supportive group with a clear purpose, to obtain donations that later allow them to have a small snack.
For the first time, in 2022, in Colmenar Viejo, children have participated in the Maya escort group.
In Lavapiés, Madrid, the festival has been recovered following the writings and news that were preserved about it and it is celebrated on the second Sunday of May.
The Maya represented in this celebration shows two very different iconographies, two of them follow the model of Colmenar Viejo, with the same arrangement of the altar and a similar aesthetic result; and a second group recreates the Goyaesque imaginary; The young women dress up in Goya-esque costumes, generally made locally and not professionally, with hairnets and other Goya-inspired adornments.
The altars of Lavapiés incorporate plant elements, although in addition to wild flowers, flowers collected in their own gardens or purchased are also included; Some years even flowers and garlands of paper or cloth have been made. In addition, they introduce other elements such as flower pots, tables or bird cages.
In Madrid, the Mayas maintain a more relaxed attitude, they can communicate with friends and get up if necessary, smile and talk to visitors. Only in some cases is there a procession of girls, so they are accompanied by their family and friends.
La Maya is inserted in Lavapiés in what is known as the Fiesta de los Mayos in which the girls are surrounded by traditional music and dances from the Community of Madrid itself.
In El Molar, the "rounds of mayos" who toured the town singing a local repertoire and seeking to "court" the Mayan girls. On April 30, he went out at night to cut the tree (known as mayo) that was stuck in the town square after peeling and decorating it.
At the beginning of the decade of the 90s, it was proposed to establish the Maya taking as a model the one that was carried out in Colmenar Viejo. Since then, the altars have been placed on the Town Hall portal, decorating the stairway with flowers and wild branches. In the center of the tapestry the seat of the Maya is placed and the others are placed next to it or on the lower step.
La Maya is dressed in white petticoats and shorts with a Manila shawl turned upside down showing the embroidery and fringe, combed with flower-adorned bows. The Mayan court wears shawls on the right.
During the festival, the women of the local association that participates in the festival distribute bread, sweets and wine.
The festival of the Mayas in Leganés has been celebrated since the early 90s at the initiative of the City Council, which wanted to recover the festivals and customs of the town. The proposal was accepted by the Regional Houses They started to organize it.
The House of Extremadura decided to adopt the Maya from Colmenares as an aesthetic and iconographic reference; the girls belong to the associative environment of the Regional House.
The rest of Casa Regionales, from Salamanca, Castilla La Mancha and Andalucía, make productions closer to their identity referents and La Maya dresses in the regional costume. The festival takes place in the main square within the festivities that the town organizes on the occasion of May 2.
Image gallery
Read more
- The first references in Spanish to the Mayas are found in the Cantigas de Alfonso X and allude to the songs that were sung in the month of May.
- In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the sources are multiplying, so it is possible to ensure that the Mayas were very widespread festivals, the object of special interest on the part of poets and playwrights such as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina or Calderón de la Barca. In the XNUMXth century, Rodrigo Caro not only makes a precise description of the rites around the Maya, but also provides numerous Latin references with which he intends to link the festival with the ancient Romans.
- The ilustrados maintained a suspicion towards the Maya, especially bothered by the crowd of girls in the street asking passers-by for money. The newspapers already in the eighteenth century and in the nineteenth century repeatedly recount this fact. Despite the prohibitions, the party continued to be celebrated.
- Mid-nineteenth century, Two trends remain. Part of the press continues to show its discomfort at the celebration of the festival and another part adopts the traditional and traditional perspective and remembers it.
- Already the twentieth century the festival began to be an object of interest for folklorists such as Ángel González Palencia, Eugenio Mele or Julio Caro Baroja. Current versions of the party are essentially recoveries. Although, even though it was mostly replaced by the Cruz de Mayo, it largely kept the memory and a good part of the festive practices of the Maya.