Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Carmine

Talking about the Carmine is like talking about something very well known and traditional: everything has been said or written once by a researcher, but there is always something new to say. This festivity was born in 1695, the year in which Andrés Quintanal and his wife María García, neighbours of La Pola Siero and devotees of the Virgen del Carmen, paid for the construction of a chapel dedicated to this Virgin in Les Campes, forming a Brotherhood under the name of the Carmelo.

The chronicles say that it cost them 12,000 reales, and that it was blessed on 17th July of the same year, that is to say, the day after the patron saint's day, and it was proposed to celebrate the feast in 1696. The chapel was located between the chestnut trees that occupied the current Plaza de Les Campes, and next to the path followed by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The members of the brotherhood, who were very numerous and from all over the province, celebrated their patron saint on the Sunday following the 16th of July, if this date did not fall on a Sunday, holding a procession in which, among other demonstrations, the dance of "los Danzantes" was performed until the first decade of this century, and in which numerous "Ramos" were displayed, a custom that lasted until 1879, when it was lost.

However, such was the turnout on Sunday that it was necessary to organise a second festival on Tuesday, market day in Pola de Siero, so that the town's devotees could celebrate their patron saint. These devotees, who used to get up early for the weekly market, came to the town with food, which consisted basically of an eel pie and other homemade dishes that they ate in the same castañeu, once the religious ceremonies and the subsequent dances were over. Needless to say that, with their bellies full, they would continue with the singing and dancing, culminating at dusk with the Danza Prima, whose refrain "Long live the Virgen del Carmen! The boom that this Tuesday pilgrimage acquired over time to the detriment of the Sunday one, to the point that it can be considered the embryo and origin of the current Carmín, is exclusively due to the fact that, in the original binomial of the festivities, the profane component was the driving force behind the festivities, acting as a dynamic element of the changes in collective mentalities, gradually absorbed the other component, the religious one, until it annulled it, leaving it relegated exclusively to the Sunday festival, consisting of a solemn mass and procession in honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Although the dates of its origin in the 17th century are now distant, the pilgrimage of El Carmín is still, in synthesis, the same as that of Tuesday, with the logical changes imposed by the times. One of these changes was the date of celebration: it was moved from Tuesday to the Monday following the 16th of July, the feast of the Virgen del Carmen.

The main reason for this change was the destruction of the patron saint's hermitage during the French invasion, which is recorded in 1815 in one of the church's books signed by Don Diego Fernández Linares, parish priest of La Pola Siero. It is also known from documentation that the bell of the chapel was given to cast a new one for the parish church, as its bell was broken.

This historical summary shows the great tradition of a festival that is considered to be one of the great pilgrimages of Asturias, and which brings the Asturian summer to life, both on the day of the festival itself and on the days preceding it with various leisure and cultural activities.