A crowd participated in the renovated San Juan Bonfire in Maschwitz

Thousands of neighbors came to the Papa Francisco Park to enjoy this ancient celebration of light and fire, with deep symbology. Before the burning of the doll there was a procession and a great show of skills.

On a very cold day, but with a lot of human, artistic and spiritual warmth, this Saturday Engineer Maschwitz experienced an authentic popular celebration with the traditional San Juan Bonfire, which had been suspended in the last two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 19.

It was the eleventh edition and perhaps it was one of the best, or the best. For the fervor of the participants, for the organization, for the deployment, the sound stimuli and the previous artistic accompaniment, which generated the ideal atmosphere in the Papa Francisco Park grounds.

People began to approach after 5:00 p.m., little by little but smoothly, until there were many. Thousands, to be sure, though difficult to calculate between the darkness that immediately fell and the vastness of space.

🔥 A crowd participated in the renewed San Juan Bonfire in Maschwitz

Thousands of neighbors came to the Papa Francisco park to enjoy this ancient ritual of light and fire. Before the burning of the doll there was a procession and a show of skills. pic.twitter.com/oYHjsxiaE1

– Escobar’s Day (@eldiadeescobar) June 27, 2022

The ritual began with the usual procession through the surrounding streets to the rhythm of drums, a sound that served as a harangue to add joy, energy and spirituality to the reception of the winter solstice, with all its symbolic meaning, on the longest night of the year. year.

The characters on stilts and the skills with fire also gave the event an charm that it had not had in other editions. The artist who played with torches and held a burning metal square with his chin drew all eyes, applause and the focus of cell phone cameras.

Ability. Fire skills kept the audience entertained before the burning of the doll.

Later, definitely at night, with colder weather and an expectant crowd, the bonfire was lit. A platform neatly mounted with boards, branches and dry leaves, which burned until it engulfed in flames and voraciously consumed the figure of the Ninot standing on the upper plinth. Fifty meters around the effigy, the heat was scorching.

The burning of the doll represented the desire and the request to get rid of the old to make way for the new. That was the dominant spirit in this ancestral celebration of light and fire, which in Ingeniero Maschwitz found an unbeatable place to keep the tradition alive with the arrival of each winter.

Organized by Arde Juan and with the support of the Undersecretariat for Cultural Management and Social Inclusion, the Bonfire of San Juan returned recharged after two years in which it could not be held due to the pandemic. The wait was worth it.