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Half hundred of people from Vigo are doing their best to sew dresses and flags that they will wear in a month since January in the venue of the neighbourhood in the Old Town

After 70 years without use the needle and the thimble, the love for the Reconquest made Sara Pereira, 94 years old, to pick up again the sewing to make “a skirt, a leather apron and a underskirt” that she will wear as Peasant during the celebrations of next month. As well as she around 50 neighbours are doing their best since the end of January to sew their dresses and flags which Vigo will return per a day to XIX Century Spain, when the troops of Napoleon were established in Galicia.
“We begin to work the 28th of January and we will continue doing it until the last day” explains Patricia González, teacher of the sewing workshop in which, since 2033, around 20 women divided in two turns works in their dresses on Friday afternoons. The aim is “to sew one dress per person, although there are always people who do more and who do less” said Patricia. The only requirement is to know a little bit of sewing and looking forward to create. Many of the pupils prove that the experience grips them because they will repeat in 2012 to improve their cupboard.
Patricia gets her inspirations from “period engraving and old dresses” that she took as models. The cotton, the wool and the linen with the models are made of are bought by the pupils. Carmen Carido, for example, explains that she used a bedspread to sew a jacket. “the experience is really good and I recommend it to everybody” – said Carmen-“now I am sewing a skirt and next year I want to repeat and make me an underskirt and a cardigan”. Also Sara, this is her third year, thinks in her “peasant dress” that she will wear the 27th of March. Besides her, Jenifer Prado, the youngest of the group, with 24 years old, admit that “at the beginning she hardly knows how to sew but now she is working in an underskirt.

Standards and Flags

People from Vigo are dressed up and their streets are decorated. The Old Town neighbourhood venue turn into a workshop on Fridays for around 30 people that paint standards and flags. Miguel Vázquez – Captain Cachamuiña the Reconquest day – says that “the half of the flags that are used this year are being made up now”. For this they paint “by hand with plastic paint” the sail clothes that later will hung on the Old Town streets. The age of the volunteers is from 10 to 70 years old. The most important, explains José Luis Lorenzo – the monk André on next 27th of March – are the “out for a good time” on Fridays from 6 to 8 in the afternoon.