Publication
5/15/2016
Category
Fairs and Festivals
It will be held as usual on July 14th the 22nd edition of the traditional historical re-enactment with which Capoliveri pays tribute every year to the memory of two young people, whose history has roots that bring in more than 500 years ago.
The legend says that Lorenzo and Maria, whose love was opposed by the families, used to met in secret on this beach. It was 1534 and the coasts of the island were raided by the pirate Barbarossa and his Saracens. One day Maria, going down to the bay to meet her Lorenzo, saw him fight with a mob of men landed from a boat. Maria ran to the beloved but he had been overwhelmed and was taken aboard the pirate ship. The last thing that Maria could see as the boat pulled away was a body thrown into the sea in which he recognized her beloved. Maria dropped in water, in a last desperate surge of love. Later, people only could find his shawl caught on a rock that since that day has been called "Ciarpa".
Years later Domingo Cardenas, the Spanish nobleman exiled on Elba, saw a graceful and gentle shadow in the bay, outlined against the vastness of the horizon lit by a myriad of bright flashes. Domingo's mind went back to the story of the fishermen and understood he had seen Maria. It was one evening in July and "shocked by that vision, Domingo promised himself that, in years to come, to allow Maria to regain its Lorenzo, he would have been lighting a thousand torches to enlighten the beach which was renamed the beach of Innamorata. Also to ensure continuity to this tradition he decided to affix to his wills a clause with whom his descendants would have kept alive the tradition. And so it was ... " The tradition has only suffered setbacks during the Wars.
The procession starts from Capoliveri and comes to the beach where will take place the true evocation itself: a girl who represents Maria plunges from the rock, leaving the shawl which will be contested by participants in the famous "Challenge of Ciarpa". Music and celebrations till dawn follow.
Event date 7/14/2016
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