Happy Birthday Antigua (Mar 10) – Greg and Mandy's Travels

Nun’s arch

What a day to be in town! It is both the third Friday in Lent, and the 480th birthday of Antigua, so the place is a’bustling.

So let’s set the scene. You will recall from my previous ramblings that way back in the 1500s Spain, Portugal, France and England were vying for supremacy as empires, and they were attempting to conquer as much of the New World as they could to gain the riches and the prestige that comes with a large empire. Spain in particular was bringing back lots of the riches gained from their conquests in South America, but pirates were ruining the party and plundering the ships as they came back to Spain. So the Spanish government wanted to create a presence in Central America to keep order in the place, and provide resistance to pirates and other empires who wanted to expand into this area.

So on this day in 1543 the Spanish king established a presence in what is now known as Antigua Guatemala. Antigua Guatemala literally means Old Guatemala. Back then the countries of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua and a province of Mexico were all administered by the Spanish under the name of the Kingdom of Guatemala. The capital was here in Antigua, which provided administration rule over the whole of the kingdom. Today is the 480th birthday of the establishment of that administrative rule by Spain.

It is also the third Friday in Lent which is the day traditionally for the local people to parade around and re-enact the story of Lent. We in the west often have a similar celebration called ‘stations of the cross’.

The view from our Casa’s rooftop was much clearer this morning, and over breakfast we were able to clearly see Volcano Agua, literally volcano of water. It was given this name as the original city was destroyed not by lava flow, but by a water flow from the side of the volcano, and had to be moved to its current location.

Then it was our day to go on a free walking tour of the city hosted by Pablo. There were eight in our group, and we started at Iglesia de Merced, which is one of the two big churches in the city. At the church, the local children were forming into various stations of the cross around the time we started our tour. The procession stopped at each school’s station around the Square and told the story of Lent. Of course, like any school event, there were hundreds of parents proudly looking on, so the square was crowded. Some of the schools had utilised traditional central American specialties like forming patterns on the ground made out of local plants and flowers.

We wandered through the town, and under the arch that was built to hide the nuns from sight as they moved between the cloisters on one side of the road and their school on the other side of the road. We visited the local Starbucks, which is reputedly second prettiest Starbucks in the world, and it was certainly packed with people who were enjoying their coffee.

We arrived at the main square, which was typically Spanish – a central park surrounded on all four sides by important civic buildings. The cathedral, all decked out for Lent, was on one side, the administrative offices of the kingdom of Guatemala were on the second, the civic offices for the administration of the city on the third, and the important commercial businesses such as the printing press and the bakery were on the fourth.

In the centre they were setting up for huge concerts this evening with large stages, huge speakers, and impressive lights, so I think the place will be humming tonight.

We ended up at Parque de la Union. The main feature at the end of the park was a huge water tank used as the cities laundry. Nobody had their own laundry back in the day, but instead utilised the laundry tank and did communal washing.

In the afternoon, Brendan and Mandy walked out of the city to the top of a nearby hill to get a view of the town and its celebrations, then at tea time we went back down to the central square to enjoy the music and the street stalls as darkness gathered.