Snapshot of the easter in Cardielos

Easter in Cardielos is one of the most enjoyable traditions that is still alive in Cardielos and that can be transmitted by the energy and happyness shown in a video that I have found in youtube.

Easter in Cardielos is centered around the last days and resurrection of Jesus Christ, on sunday and monday, a silver cross is taken from house to house across the village to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to bring the benidiction to the house and the people that have gathered in it. Usually the houses are open to any one, but only friends and family are actually present. After the cross moves away to another house, the guests are invited to eat and drink a vast quantity of delicious dishes, desserts and sweets. Since most of the people are actually going to several houses, you can actually see, that everyone ends up eating and drinking enough to pass lunch and dinner ;)

While searching for information about Cardielos on the net, I have come to the blog a new musica group created a couple of years ago in Cardielos, to play  Galizian Pipes, which are more or less of the same family than scottish pipes. The group have been collecting some success throughout Portugal and Spain.

Cardielos has always been a village with a long tradition of musical activity, and in the last years ( from what I remember) have seen the creation of several music initiatives like a music school, a all-girls musical group "lirios do campo", a folkloric group "As bordadeiras da casa do povo de Cardielos", a music band "Evolusom" and now this new pipes group.

It is very good to see that the village is keeping is cultural activity moving straight forward.

http://bandadegaitasdesantiagodecardielos.blogspot.com/

Cardielos using twitter

For those that don´t know twitter, it is a microblogging tool that allows people to keep track about someone or someplace in easy way through small messages (SMS like). The tool is being very strongly used by a lot of people across the world, and I have decided to incorporate it in this site :).

Unfortunetly, the tag Cardielos was already being used by someone, and I have had to use the ecardielos one, e for electronic.

The url is http://twitter.com/e_cardielos

Since Cardielos is a very rich place in handcraft, I have decided to create a special category to track what can be found in Cardielos.

I have read in a recent article by the portuguese deparment of forests (Direccao Geral de Florestas) that two old trees, located in the top of Saint Sylvester hill, near the chapel, have been considered by the authorities, as trees of public interest.
These are really good news, as this will mean special care, for trees, that can have more than 200 years, and that as far as I can remember, were there in my childhood.
Since they are located near the chapel, they have protected with their branches the peregrines while eating during the romary. At the same time, the branches were also used to hang the speakers used to broadcast the musics and the Christian celebrations.
I hope that they will last more years, although the summer fires and the winds are making a tough mission, as proved by the accident, that one of the trees suffered a couple of years ago.

As to improve the user experience here at Cardielos Digital, I have implmented a basic social networking tool, that will allow all members to share useful information about themselves with the other members of the community.
The tool is available under the option Social Networking in the left menu. It will allow members to upload their favorite images, make references to videos and other multimedia information on other sites.
The system is build around the Yogurt Beta 2.9 available for the XOOPS CMS, which is being used on this site, and it is really a very promising tool.

For those who don´t know, Serreleis is a small village that shares with Cardielos, the same beach name , Barco do Porto, and part of the Saint Sylvester hill.
For a while, there was no reference to them on the Internet, but now I have found a small video presenting the village.

I have found a very good article written by a folklore group of portugueses living in Germany about the usage of gold in the Minho's folklore and how much it represented to Minho's women a couple of years back.

I still remember that my grandmother was always buying gold and that each opportunity that she had, was a good one to buy more and more, and at the same to give some to her family.
During the old days gold represented a sign of richness, and the more gold the girl was able to show on her chest the more attractive she was to be married.
During the major celebrations in Cardielos, it is tradition to have a couple of girls to be dressed in the typical "Bride" costume, and to aks to all the neighbours int he village to borrow their gold for a couple of days, in order to have the "mordoma" bear the maximum gold possible on her chest.
The article is still in portuguese but I will translate it to english during the next days, as I think it is a good reference to understand one our major traditions in Cardielos

Although I am not fully sure that the group dancing is from Cardielos, I have found the link in comments to other posts concerning Cardielos and i have decided to include it, as it is really an impressive showcase of the traditional dancing in Minho Region and Cardielos.
The choreography is not the typical one, as the dancing is usually based in circles, but netherless it is magnificent.