Desfile de Autos Clasicos y Antiguos(57)

The Flowers Festival ( es, Feria de las Flores) is a

festival A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival c ...

that takes place in

Medellín Medellín ( or ), officially the Municipality of Medellín ( es, Municipio de Medellín), is the second-largest city in Colombia, after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia. It is located in the Aburrá Valley, a central re ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. The festival is the most important social event for the city and includes a pageant, automobiles, a Paso Fino horse parade and many musical concerts.

History

The first Flowers Festival took place on May 1, 1957. It was organized by Arturo Uribe, a member of the Board of the Office of Development and Tourism in Medellin, Colombia. The festival lasted for five days with an exposition of flowers displayed in the Metropolitan Cathedral, which was organized by the Gardening Club of Medellín and monsignor Tulio Botero to celebrate the Virgin Mary day. This

flower parade A flower parade is a parade in which the floats, vehicles, boats, participants, animals and other things are decorated or covered in flowers. Often there are other elements like marching bands and people in costumes. Flower parades are held in ...

represents the end of slavery when slaves carried men and women on their backs up steep hills instead of flowers. The first silleteros parade also took place with some 40 men from the '' corregimiento'' of Santa Elena carrying on their backs flower arrangements to the exposition site. This festival initially took place during the month of May but was changed to August in 1958 to celebrate the independence of Antioquia. Since then, other events have been added like the ''International Pageant of the Flowers'', the cavalcade, Guinness Records in 1996 and 1999, classic automobiles parade, Orchids exposition, among others.

2006 edition

In 1999 during its first edition, the festival reached 482 ''silleteros'' participants. El Spain In Madrid the feast was with the ''silleteros''
/ref> The 2006 edition also featured a new category of ''silleteros'' as spokeswomen for the Convention Center Bureau of Madrid Maria Isabel Lopez mentioned "these are the Pioneers, who will show all their ''Silletas'' making experience, but will not participate in the contest".
/ref> Some 50 peasants will carry the ''silletas'', 260 featuring traditional arrangements, 50 with commercial propaganda and 28 from the new Pioneer category. As in previous years, the ''Mayor of Medellín'' sponsored the awards of the ''Silleteros'' contest. In 2006, there were a total of 260 awards, selected and given by three juries.

History

2006 edition

References

External links