El Sauzal
"La Baranda" WINE MUSEUM
Tenerife Vine and Wine Museum
Northern Motorway, Km 21 (El Sauzal exit)
38360 El Sauzal
Tel: 922 572 535
/ 922 572 542 (Restaurant) 922 563 388 - Fax: 922 572 744
Opening Times:
Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wine tasting and Shop until 10 p.m.
Sunday and Bank Holidays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday closed.
Website: http://www.casadelvinotenerife.com/
"La Baranda" Wine Museum is an old 17th century Canary Island hacienda owned by the Tenerife Cabildo (Island Government), who use it to promote the island's quality wines. It also houses the Tenerife Vine and Wine Museum. The museum has a wine-tasting room, where you can try wines from the 5 different denominations of origin of the island, and they are all on sale in the shop.
The Wine museum also has a projection and exhibition room, Restaurant, Tasca and Terrace, plus an old wine press in the central patio. Car parking facilities available.
Honey Museum "Casa de la Miel"
The Honey Museum, created by the Tenerife Cabildo (Island Government) in 1996, is situated on the La Finca La Baranda property (Sauzal), where the Wine Museum is also sited. This is an initiative taken to support, develop and conserve the island bee keeping industry, aimed at enhancing the quality of their honeys. Here they provide a range of services, such as extraction, analysis, bottling, recovery and rolling the wax, technical and sanitary advice and training.
After analysis and quality control, the Tenerife Cabildo´s Honey Museum guarantees the quality of the honey with its "Miel de Tenerife" label.
Tel. 922 562 711 - Fax 922 561 806
Web site: www.casadelamiel.org
Canary Islands Wrestling Museum
Address: Callejón del Cementerio, nº 7, 38360, El Sauzal.
Museum telephone: 629-272-580
Wrestling Federation telephone: 922-251-452 .
E-mail: prensa@federacioncanariadeluchacanaria.com.
Admission is free.
Opening hours:
Monday - Thursday Mornings: 9 am to 1 pm / Afternoons: 5 pm to 8 pm.
Fridays 9 am to 2 pm / Saturday and Sunday: Closed
The museum, located in Casa de Los Callejones, is a project driven by the Canary Islands Wrestling Federation thanks to funding from the Canary Islands Ministry for Education, Universities, Culture and Sport General Directorate for Cultural Cooperation and Heritage and from the El Sauzal City Council itself. The exhibits for this museum, better understood as an interpretation centre, were installed by the Pinolere Cultural Association and El Alfar Canarias S.L., which designed and created a museum about Canary Islands wrestling based on a script previously agreed with the Canary Islands Wrestling Federation, which seeks to promote the history of one of the most important cultural symbols of the Canary Islands: wrestling.
Voluntary support has been provided by people and institutions who have contributed numerous and valuable graphic documents. Famous people such as Salvador Sánchez “Borito” in Gran Canaria and Francisco Antequera Amor on the island of La Palma, the El Sauzal wrestler Belarmino Goya, Ravelo's neighbour, Filomena González, together with scientific advice from Canary Islands wrestling teacher, researcher and historian José Roque Falcón Falcón.
ROOM-BY-ROOM TOUR
The entrance to the museum welcomes visitors with a photographic panel of a small number of wrestlers from throughout history.
“World Wrestling” room: there is a panel that exhibits wrestling throughout the world showing how some different wrestling styles – body to body, grappling, no arms – became a universal sport and others formed part of the folklore of different countries and geographical regions throughout the world.
Indigenous Wrestling room: from the first inhabitants provide certainty that the sport was practised in the Canary Islands, although the accounts are at times confusing. Writings from chroniclers, historians and literary specialists interested in explaining the way of life of indigenous people in the islands.
Wrestling in emigration room: which explains the story of wrestlers who emigrated to America with the aim of seeking their fortune, practising in theatres, circuses and public exhibitions in countries such as Cuba, Argentina, Venezuela and the Sahara.
Green room. (From the end of the Spanish conquest until the end of the 19th century): after the conquest of the islands, many indigenous Canarian customs gave way to progressive disappearance or change, leading to the birth of a new society which, although it had many indigenous peoples, also received contributions from numerous settlers and slaves.
The Kitchen Room explains the regulation processes of creating the federations, up until the independence of the FEL and the creation of the FLC, as well as the present and the future of Canary Islands wrestling.
Audiovisual Room named "El Terrero" in which there is a simulation of a ticket office and entrance to a seating pavilion at a Canarian wrestling ring, where different images are shown of some of the wrestling matches throughout history recorded by Canary Islands television.
Top floor:
- Social and wrestling media.
- The emergence of new technologies, including the internet, as a means of expressing the world of Canary Islands wrestling.
- The clothing used in wrestling. The attire that must be worn by wrestlers. The making of wrestling clothing, the colours, regulations on the shorts.
- Types of hold
- El Terrero. The place where the wrestling matches were held.
- Las Mañas. The different techniques used by the wrestlers.
- The referees, jury and board.
- The competitions. Wrestling systems: running fight, best-of-three, reduced, all against all. Individual competitions by categories, individual by weight and challenges during and after the match.
- El Mandador. Essential in the development of the wrestling match. Responsible for matching
- Art in wrestling: Sculptures and pictorial works. Literature and music dedicated to numerous wrestling works and to the most famous wrestlers.
- Women in wrestling. The appearance of women's teams.
Back of the building: outside there is a simulation of half a wrestling match that serves as an exhibition for visitors.
House Museum of the Sierva de Dios
Address: Pasaje Sierva de Dios, s/n, 38360, El Sauzal.
Telephone: 922-573-492 .
Admission is free.
Opening hours: Monday and Tuesday Closed / Wednesday from 3 pm to 6 pm
Thursday - Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm / Sunday from 10 am to 1 pm
The Casa Museo de la Sierva de Dios (House Museum of the Sierva de Dios), located in the municipality of El Sauzal, opened on 19 December 2007 following several restoration projects undertaken by the Cabildo of Tenerife.
It is a historical recreation that serves as a homage to the memory of Sister María de Jesús, who was born in El Sauzal in 1643. In fact, the Casa Museo project arose because it is believed that she was born in this area.
Sister María de Jesús was born in El Sauzal on 23 March 1643 and died, popularly renowned for her holiness, on 15 February 1731. People throughout the Canary Islands are awaiting news of her beatification from Rome, where the Vatican is in the process of issuing instructions for her canonisation.
The Casa Museo contains everyday items that, although they did not belong to Sister María de Jesús or her family, help to recreate the period in which she lived and give visitors a point of reference. The building itself incorporates wine cellars, a tool-shed, a patio, vegetable gardens, kitchen and living room or estrado (the name given to the room where the women of the house would gather to sew).
THE STORY OF LA SIERVITA DE DIOS
The surprising case of Sister Mary of Jesus. Every 15 February, the ritual is repeated. Thousands of people, mostly loyal believers, parade a few metres from the ornate sarcophagus which contains the perfectly preserved body of the nun Sister Mary of Jesus. A glass cover enables the body of the religious figure, dressed in her habits, to be observed, revealing the hands and face which appear as if no time has gone by.
Although in the Canary Islands her popularity is indisputable, what is certain is that in Spain there are few references to Sister Mary of Jesus in writing that explicitly or even superficially address the range of anomalies and portents that surround saints and religious figures. La Siervita (the Little Servant) as she is affectionately known by believers in her virtues and intercession as well as those who consider her to be at the centre of a strange phenomenon, was born in the Tenerife town of El Sauzal on 23 March 1643, and died on 15 February 1731 at 87 years of age. Since then, the body has remained incorrupt and preserved in a way that apparently borders on the miraculous, however sceptical we may be, especially considering the particular environmental conditions surrounding the body during the first years after the death, which were not favourable to preservation in the slightest. Her spectacular condition, together with other strange and equally interesting phenomena linked to her, make this Tenerife nun of indisputable interest within the field of mystical phenomenology and popular religion.
Mysticism and devotion
Unlike other venerated incorrupt bodies in a religious context, that of María de León Bello y Delgado, the birth name of our protagonist, cannot be visited by the faithful and the general public at any time of year. If someone wants to see this incredible example of preservation up close, they must get up early and stand in line on February 15, the date on which her death is commemorated. The body is revealed by the nuns at the convent of Santa Catalina de La Laguna, the place where it has been preserved for centuries. Throughout the day, thousands of people, scrupulously guarding their turn in the long queues that encircle the building, pass before the luxurious glass-covered sarcophagus gifted by Amaro Pargo, a friend of the nun and benefactor of the convent, who felt protected by the religious figure. Every year, this pilgrimage enables hundreds of new followers to join the cause of beatification, receiving favours from the religious figure, thus increasing the miraculous fame that began even when she was alive and that has led to her being one of the three most worshipped on the island, after the Virgen de Candelaria and Hermano Pedro de Betancourt.
Although the body is located ten metres away from where the pilgrims pass by and the lighting is not so good, it is possible to see in some detail the apparent good state of preservation through the facial features of the nun who, wearing the Dominican habit, only appears to be asleep.
The life of Sister Mary of Jesus is full, as would be expected, of all types of stories that highlight the heavenly graces with which she was apparently blessed, traditional stories that are logically very difficult to verify and that stimulate popular devotion. It is said, for example, that a from a young age she felt a great devotion to an image of Baby Jesus in the Church of San Pedro, in El Sauzal, which supposedly would have been at the doors of the temple, or how a laurel stopped growing in order to be able to continue to receive direct care from the nun. These signs seem to belong more to the usual pious stories that emerge with the aim of creating a life story that reveals the presence of divinity from childhood.
She entered the convent in 1668, took the habit a year later and from then on lived true to her vows and in constant penitence, including flagellation, fasting and carrying a heavy wooden cross around the gardens. These acts of painful dedication are difficult to comprehend today, but were common currency in another time when religious life was very different. A journalist for EL DÍA, Domingo García Barbuzano, wrote a complete and devoted biography about the nun several years ago, which tells of unique phenomena and “strange” occurrences. It highlights, for example, an episode which is known as telekinesis in parapsychology, in which a steel medallion with the image of Our Lady of Solitude, owned by the nun, spontaneously repaired after having been broken into several pieces days before, or an episode of possible levitation described by other nuns. As occurred with other mystics, Sister Mary of Jesus sometimes went into a state of ecstasy, with descriptions of light emanating from her face, as well as a notable elevation of her body temperature. “When she communed”, wrote Barbuzano, “her body was surrounded by a divine heat that emerged on her face”. It was so great that she once said: away from me my Lord, I cannot endure so much fire. She disguised the heat by saying it was from the cloak and veil of the habit. Both cases are unique parabiological phenomena.
Incorruptibility
The life of the religious figure also tells of various premonitory episodes, together with a curious dream after which she developed stigmata on the side of her torso and a more-than-possible bilocation attested by the famous pirate Amaro Pargo, in addition to some mystical writings studied by her biographers and kept in safekeeping by the nuns. Despite the episodes of supernatural appearance alone being significant, these might not have become known if it were not for the incorruptibility of her body, which was discovered three years after her burial. The texts describe that shortly before her death she went into ecstasy, conserving her pulse and dilated pupils for more than 24 hours, with blood welling if she was cut, and a transparent liquid that maintained the smell of jasmine up until several years later. In January 1734, when the remains were moved, the body was found to be intact, with the clothing wet, flexible, with its natural colour, also leading to the circumstance that a piece of flesh removed by a nun and conserved in a reliquary seemed to have grown unexplainably, as it has done since then, despite a mere 273 years having gone by.
The new building on the museum grounds is based on a grid of pillars and beams that support a conventional structure of joists and ribbed floor slabs on the first floor. The roof structure is made of rectangular and tubular pieces of steel, and wooden sheets. The surroundings are made of two brick walls that are supported on a concrete structure.
Although there is a long miracle worker tradition, the Church is seen to be so stringent that at least in these cases it plays “devil's advocate” with the aim of certifying beyond all doubt the supernatural nature of the events presented as miraculous. And although incorruptibility is not a sign of saintliness, it is evident that also in this case there is significant popular devotion. However, in the record for the cause for beatification of La Siervita, there are several episodes of cures that are listed as candidates for miracles, although today and in a world so exposed to the unthinkable, none of them are conclusive. Perhaps this year the curious and the devoted will see the miracle hoped for.
