The Fiesta de las Cruces ("Festival of the Crosses") or Cruz de Mayo ("May Cross") is a holiday celebrated on 3 May in many parts of Spain and Hispanic America.
Religiously, the festival is rooted in the legendary search by the Byzantine Empress Saint Helena for the cross on which Jesus died, but the popular traditions connected to the festival certainly trace back to pagan traditions brought to Spain by the Roman Empire (see May Day).
The legend is that Emperor Constantine I, in the sixth year of his reign, confronted the barbarians on the banks of the Danube to christianity, in a battle where victory was believed to be impossible because of the great size of the enemy army. One night, Constantine had a vision of a cross in the sky, and by it the words "In hoc signo vincis" (With this sign, you shall be victorious). The emperor had a cross made and put it at the front of his army, which won an easy victory over the enemy multitude. On returning to the city and learning the significance of the cross, Constantine was baptized as a Christian and gave orders to construct Christian churches. He sent his mother, Saint Helena, to Jerusalem in search of the True Cross, the cross on which Jesus died. Once there, Helena summoned the wisest priests to aid in her attempt to find the cross. On Calvary hill, traditionally considered the site of Jesus's crucifixion, she found three bloody logs hidden. In order to discover which was the True Cross, she placed the logs one by one over sick people, and even dead people, who were cured or resuscitated at the touch of the True Cross. The veneration of the True Cross, and the use of pieces of the True Cross as relics, begins at this time. Saint Helena died praying for all believers in Christ to celebrate the commemoration of the day the Cross was found.
Places where the holiday is celebrated
The "Fiesta de las Cruces" is celebrated in numerous places in Spain and Hispanoamerica.
Various groups of people — usually affiliated with the Hermandades, the religious brotherhoods that organize the Easter Week processions — come together to decorate a tall cross with flowers.
They choose a picturesque square or street and decorate the area around the cross with typical and traditional items: a guitar, an embroidered shawl, old earthenware pots, and an old-fashioned sewing machine. For the cross of the Hermandad de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, Queen of the Sea, they decorate it fishing nets and tackle. For San Isidro, the Ploughman Saint, they display crops and traditional foodstuffs.
They set out these beautiful items, redolent of the past and the town's traditions, creating an artistic display that everyone comes to admire.
Although it is usually one of the Brotherhoods that decorates the crosses, it can also be a group of friends and neighbours, a youth group, or a charity who come together to create these lovely displays.
Aguilar de la Frontera (Province of Córdoba). There is a procession of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios from the Iglesia de la Veracruz ("Church of the True Cross") in the Remedios neighborhood.
Águilas (Region of Murcia) in the pedanía (sub-municipal district) of Calabardina
Alboraya (Province of Valencia). Organized by the Junta Local de Hermandades de Semana Santa de Alboraya (Local Alboraya Grouping of Brotherhoods of the Holy Week)
Alcalá la Real (Province of Jaén)
Alhaurín el Grande (Province of Málaga)
Aljucer, a pedanía of the city of Murcia
Alicante, in the Santa Cruz neighborhood
Almería, throughout the historic center of the city
Almonaster la Real (province of Huelva)