Fire Festival: Le Focare

There is a feast in Cutrofiano, the winter festival of the Cutrofianesi that is celebrated every Feb. 17 with Holy Mass, Procession and “Focare” (falò) in the village. The term ”focara” a dialectal derivation from Salento, and other southern dialects, stands for a falò of wood for burning. Today the tradition continues,in almost all municipalities of Salento, piles of faggots are created at the crossroads of the main roads, a traditional rite participated in by all the inhabitants. The fire is lit during the evening of the eve of the liturgical feast of St. Anthony Abbot on January 16. Around this burning pyre the families who built it are wont to linger, to spend the evening there. Where this tradition originates is not certain, there are currents of thought: perhaps from ancient pagan rites or perhaps in memory of an earthquake that struck Salento centuries ago. The focara è consists of thousands of bundles of shrubs, dried olive branches, generally speaking it canò have a diameter of about 20 mt to go as high as 25 meters. The bundles from the fields are transported to a suburban square and arranged until they form what they call “furnieddhru” in Salento, a typical country building that farmers used as a storage room. .. The inhabitants begin the work of this pyramid of dry branches alreadyà in the first days of December.There are calculated to be about a hundred falò built all over Salento, especially in winter, to warm the cold nights of pilgrims on the feast day of the village. The focara as mentioned above probably draws its origin from a disastrous event that struck the Salento many centuries ago: earthquake (as in Acquarica di Lecce) or hurricane (in Martignano). Fire then, as a universal symbol, the flame is associated, for example, with the sacred, love, sex, light, glory and purification. Other Focare to signal are for example that of San Marzano (TA) in the Ionian province we point out the great “Zjarr i Madhe the falò largest and oldest in Italy.The term Zjarr i Madhe means big fire. It has its origins around 1600, the peculiarity of this rite è that it is done in procession with 50 horses carrying bundles of dry branches, the faithful then in turn carry logs for more than 3 km, until they reach the point of the construction of the focara. Some horses then, kneel before the patron saint St. Joseph. È this is a unique tradition in Italy that attracts tourists from all over the world.