Festival of the Trays - Portugal

Early July, every four years, Tomar holds the traditional Festa dos Tabuleiros (Festival of the Trays). As you can read on the postcard sent by Rui, this year the festival took place between 29 June and 8 July.

In addition to the postcard sent by Rui, I'm also posting the postcards that Paula and Zé sent me during the 6th Postcrossing anniversary meeting in Tomar in 2011. I don't remember where the card with the girls came from.

This festival has its origins in the worship of the Holy Spirit, a great devotion of Queen Saint Isabel, wife of King Dinis, and is strongly rooted throughout the whole national territory but in Tomar it reaches a most symbolic and followed fair. In the adornment of the Trays, houses and streets, one can find flowers, bread and wheat spikes that are typical elements of ancient and traditional crops festivals.

 Design: Vasco Nuno Martins

For the Festa dos Tabuleiros, in addition to the traditional Parade, it is also organized the "Procession of the Boys", the "Mordomo" Parade and Partial Parades. The streets decorated by the locals, the street Parties, the Popular Games and the "Peza", illustrate and bring the festival alive for over three days.

The Grand Parade takes place on Sunday and the city's window balconies are decorated with gaudy brocade quilts to welcome the procession of trays. The parade always begins with fireworks men clothed in white with a red band, followed by pipers and music bands. There follows the Banner of the Holy Spirit held by the Mayor, and then the guests of honour carrying three Crowns and, finally, Banners and Crowns of all the parishes as well as their duly ornamented Trays carried by coupled pairs. The young women will be wearing white with a coloured ribbon across the chest and place the stacked trays on their heads, while the young men wear white shirts, dark pants, cap on the shoulder and a tie the colour of the girl´s ribbon.

The traditional Tray should have the height of the girl who carries it and it is decorated with paper flowers, wheat spikes, 30 bread loaves of 400g each, stuffed into rods coming out of a wicker basket decorated with an embroidered white cloth. At the top of the Tray, the Cross of Christ or the Dove of the Holy Spirit finishes off a crown. The day after the Grand Parade, tradition implies distributing the bread and meat - "Pêza" - amongst the people of the municipality. - in: http://www.conventocristo.gov.pt/en