Traditional Canarian sports: what you are actually watching
There is an awkward moment that happens to almost everyone who stays at a village fiesta in the Canaries. Suddenly a crowd forms around a circle of sand, two men take hold of each other's trousers, and ten seconds later one of them is on the ground and everyone is shouting.
Nobody explains anything, because to the people there, there is nothing to explain.
These are not shows put on for visitors. They are federated competitions with rules, leagues and referees, which also happen to be part of the fiesta programme. And four facts make them much easier to follow.
Canarian wrestling: the terrero, the brega, the fall
This is the traditional sport of the archipelago, and the one you are most likely to run into.
It is fought in a terrero, a circular area of sand or beaten earth. It is really two circles sharing a centre, 15 and 17 metres across, with about five centimetres of fine sand on top so that falls do not injure anyone.
Teams have twelve wrestlers each. They face off in pairs, and each individual bout is called a brega. It starts from one very specific hold: left hand on the opponent's right trouser leg, both men bent forward.
From there the rule is simple, which is why it is over so fast: you lose if any part of your body other than the sole of your foot touches the ground. A knee counts. A hand counts.
What makes it worth watching is not strength. Each wrestler has his own repertoire of techniques for breaking the other's balance, and you will see enormous men brought down by someone far smaller. That is not an accident. That is the whole point.
Stick fighting: juego del palo and lucha del garrote
There are no blows here. That is the part that surprises people most.
In the juego del palo, two opponents face each other with sticks of three different lengths: the short stick or macana, the medium stick or vara, and the long one, called lata, astia, lanza or garrote depending on the island, at around three metres.
The aim is not to hit the other person. It is to evade, deflect and control the distance. Seen from outside it looks less like a fight than like a very fast conversation. Today it survives mostly as a demonstration, at fiestas and among friends.
The shepherd's leap: a three metre pole with an iron tip
This one did not begin as a sport. It began as a way of getting around.
Shepherds on these islands crossed ravines and impossible slopes with the help of a wooden lance, using it to descend gradients that would be reckless on foot. That is the salto del pastor, also called the brinco canario.
The pole is around three metres long, solid, and tipped with a metal point called the regatón, which is what bites into the rock. The leap is a matter of leaning your weight onto it and controlling the drop.
If you watch a demonstration, watch the regatón. The whole technique depends on where it goes.
The others you will also come across
The Canary Islands government recognises several more traditional games and sports, and all of them turn up in fiesta programmes:
Stone lifting and plough lifting: exactly what they sound like, the weight of old farming life turned into a contest.
Bola canaria: played on packed earth, and the easiest of all to stumble across on any afternoon in any village.
Vela latina: boats carrying an enormous sail for their size, typical of the bay of Las Palmas. Easy to watch from the shore.
Ox pulling: teams of oxen hauling weight. It does not sit on the government's teaching list alongside the others, but it has a serious competition: the final of the main contest is named the Trofeo Gobierno de Canarias.
Where and when to actually see them
You do not need to find a special event. You need to find a fiesta.
A luchada is a Canarian wrestling meeting, and it is part of the programme at a great many patron saint fiestas, above all in summer and September. Larger fiestas usually add ox pulling contests and stick fighting demonstrations.
September is dense with them. On Tenerife, for instance, the fiestas of the patron of La Laguna include an institutional luchada and, a few days later, the final of the ox pulling contest. We cover that fiesta and how it is structured separately.
To see what is on over the coming days, island by island, there is the agenda. If you want to understand the fiestas these sit inside, we cover that in the guide to Canarian fiestas and romerías and, month by month on Tenerife, in festivals and events.
Two practical notes for the day it happens to you. Entry to these events is usually free, and there is no reserved seating for anyone: you watch standing, and it fills up. And if you are invited to a terrero, go. It is by far the best way to see it, and nobody expects you to know the rules.
Cover photo: "Homenaje a la Lucha Canaria" (Juan Miguel Cubas), Morro Jable, Fuerteventura. Photograph: Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.
