The crowds in Santa Cruz on Saturday |
Santa Cruz de Tenerife lived a Carnival Piñata this year that outdid all the forecasts. The second Daytime Carnival event on Saturday 9 March fused into the night time dances, with more than fifty performances in 18 uninterrupted hours of music and dance. The number of people in the carnival area was around 400,000 people, according to local police data. Between 7 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock in the afternoon, 18,332 more vehicles entered the city than the previous Saturday. This increase and the traffic jams at the entrance to Santa Cruz forced a redoubling of efforts to regulate traffic at the entrances to the capital. This became especially evident in the hours before the concert offered by the Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra, preceded by Cuban band Orishas.
The crowd ended up cramming the entire area between Avenida Francisco La Roche, the Alameda del Duque de Santa Elena and Plaza de España, as well as adjacent streets such as La Marina, Villalba Hervás and Emilio Calzadilla.
From midday, when the program of activities organized by the City Council began, the influx of people was constant around the stages installed in the squares of La Candelaria and Príncipe and the Avenue Francisco La Roche.
The numbers are twice that of the final Daytime Carnival last year and certainly beats the 250,000 people who attended the Celia Cruz concert for Carnival in Santa Cruz in 1987 that was registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest gathering of people in an outdoor plaza to attend a concert.
Juan Luis Guerra Breaks Tenerife Carnival Attendance Record | El Carnaval de Santa Cruz desborda sus previsiones con una Piñata multitudinaria | El Carnaval de Día bate récords con 400.000 personas en Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Santa Cruz bate el récord de Celia Cruz