The Festival of Corpus Christi is the main celebration of the city. Every year it starts on Monday at midnight with the ‘alumbrado’, that is, the turning on of thousands of light bulbs.
The Festival is usually in June, but it depends on Easter. The way to know the exact date of the Corpus Christi is to count 60 days from the Easter Monday – the first Monday after the Sunday of Resurrection – and we will get the Corpus Christi Thursday, the main day of the Festival. In these days, the city is preparing to enjoy and live
its Major Festival, that more than five hundred years ago was ordered by the royal court. The Corpus Christi Festival
is part of the most bright tradition that perserves the city and the history of his citizens, creating days of genuine enjoyments.
In these days Granada smells and dresses up like the Corpus where a complete range of cultural events, among
them the Taurinas Festival is enhanced, share the time with the carefully decorated stands and the fair swings
vibrating. The enviroment can be enjoyed both during the day and the night. During the day it is possible to see
elegant carriages carrying people dressed with the local flamenco dress. During the night the flamenco enviroment
does not die and this can be seen in any of the stands and its decoration cared to the smallest detail.
In this Festival, unlike others, the public stands are with the private ones, so that the visitors can access freely
and know the enviroment it is lived in these dates and in this celebration.
During the week it is need to highlight 2 processions that stroll through the city:
-Every Wednesday of the festival, in the middle of the morning the Tarasca, a model that it is suposed to dress up like the fashion of this period, strolles through the city on the back of a fierce dragon that seems to be surrendered
under his feet. Hence, the secret best saved is the dress that will show off the day of the Tarasca. The Tarasca, so,
is the pagan counterpoint of the religious festival.
-The big party of Granada is organized around the Thursday, day of the Corpus Christi, day in that all the city
cram the streets in order to contemplate the procesion of the same name.
The following Sunday a small process is celebrated around the Cathedral, the so called ‘Octava del Corpus’.
