{"id":23007,"date":"2024-03-07T10:08:55","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T08:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/?p=23007"},"modified":"2024-03-07T10:08:55","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T08:08:55","slug":"old-woman-day-mojacar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/old-woman-day-mojacar\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDay of the Old Woman\u201d, traditional festivity in Moj\u00e1car"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today 7th of March Moj\u00e1car celebrates the traditional \u00b7Day of the Old Woman.\u201d A unique festival that has no reference points anywhere except in this area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is customary that once Carnival or Shrovetide is over, which are the three days that precede Ash Wednesday, and coinciding with the first Thursday of Lent, the ancient rite of \u201cOld Idle Day\u201d is celebrated. <\/p>\n

This \u201cOld Idle\u201d would correspond to the allegorical recreation of the confrontation between Don Carnal and Do\u00f1a Cuaresma; festivity and fun versus retreat and sobriety.<\/p>\n

Hence Day of the Old Woman is celebrated on the Thursday closest to the middle of Lent, from which the expression “departing from the old Lent” comes and consists of a day of food in the countryside on which friends and family gather to bid farewell to winter and to welcome spring. In these municipalities, the afternoon of \u201cOld Woman’s Day\u201d is considered a holiday and many businesses remain closed that afternoon.<\/p>\n

With this festive mood, the residents of Moj\u00e1car meet up in the different and multiple green areas of the municipality, mainly in the settings of \u201clos Gurullos\u201d and \u201clas Alparatas\u201d, to share a good paella and taste the sweet treats that their \u201cold women\u201d hide, keeping up the ancient rite.<\/p>\n

Prior to this, each old woman is stuck in the ground and the little ones are in charge of breaking it, like a \u201cpi\u00f1ata\u201d (a decorated figure containing sweets), to eat the sweets it contains, continuing with the ceremony that the children impatiently await: the moment of breaking \u201cthe old woman\u201d and discovering the sweets and gifts hidden inside.<\/p>\n

It is at this point where children take centre stage. Each family or group of friends gather around their \u201cold woman,\u201d which is a doll that looks like an old woman, made on a wooden cross with a cloth head and filled with sweets. It was customary for the \u201cold women\u201d to be made at home, each family doing their own. Today, working life complicates things a little more and many of them are bought to order but, in any case, they continue to be made by hand.<\/p>\n

Also typical of the day is tasting the \u201chornazo\u201d, an elongated sweet bread with a braid that encloses a hard-boiled egg, although the day is generally characterised by an abundance of food of all kinds.<\/p>\n

\tThe Day of the Old Woman is the only festivity in Andaluc\u00eda not represented by any dedication to a saint\u2019s day, but by a pagan figure: the Old Woman, although it has religious echoes.<\/p>\n

Whatever its origin, what\u2019s certain is that it has been celebrated \u201csince forever\u201d and no Moj\u00e1car local misses their annual event in one of the first opportunities of the year to enjoy the outdoors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today 7th of March Moj\u00e1car celebrates the traditional \u00b7Day of the Old Woman.\u201d A unique festival that has no reference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":23011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-actualidad-en","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23026,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23007\/revisions\/23026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mojacar.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}