The most traditional festivities are the Candelas and San Blas. They used to be celebrated coinciding with their liturgical feast (February 2 and 3), although nowadays they are organized on the weekend closest to this date. On both days the protagonists are the singers, five young women who are responsible for interpreting some very old songs, which with a plain language, naive and full of popular spirituality, try to explain the feast of the presentation of Jesus Christ in the temple.
On the first day, the day of the Candelas, a small procession is held in the Plaza de España, with the Virgin of the Rosary, of which there is already data of its existence since the eighteenth century. In the middle of the mass, after the offertory, the five young women begin to sing from the doorway, requesting permission from the priest to continue their procession and singing through the center of the church. Once inside, in the main aisle of the temple, the stanzas continue walking slowly towards the altar, where the interpretation ends. The five young women perform their coplas with a tambourine; they also carry with them the offerings of a donut and a dove.
One of the peculiar characteristics of the music of these coplas is the existence of two different intonations, one more solemn and the other, which is performed in the middle of the interpretation, more cheerful and jovial. The festival has been linked since ancient times to the Virgin of the Rosary, with whom this peculiar celebration ends, with the presentation of the newborns of the town.
San Blas is celebrated the following day. The protagonists are the same singers as the previous day. The festivity begins with the procession of the Saint, a polychrome wood carving from the 18th century that has lost almost all its chromatism, which is carried entirely during the procession by the young girls. Although the coplas begin after the offertory, their execution is different from the previous day. The young women sing the songs a cappella, without the aid of any instrument, standing in the first pews of the church. Like their predecessors, these coplas tell in a simple way the story of Saint Blaise, bishop of Sebaste, martyr of the church in Roman times, who is attributed with the healing powers of the throat, being a doctor and saving, according to the legends, a child from choking to death on a fish bone.
San Blas was a very popular saint during the Middle Ages and, thanks to many mendicant clerics, his devotion spread throughout Spain. Probably through the intercession of one of these monks there are relics of the foot in Torrejón el Rubio.
