May, Las Cruces de Mayo, The crosses of May, a spring fiesta across the Region of Murcia

The Crosses of May is celebrated across Spain

Mayday is traditionally a time to celebrate the Spring and the 1st May is a national red day and Bank Holiday in Spain. However, many fiestas also take place on the 3rd May and combine with the Mayday celebrations.

The Fiestas of Las Cruces de Mayo is celebrated on the 3^rd May officially.

Across the Region of Murcia, crosses are erected in the streets, dressed with flowers, and ornaments and celebrated in many different ways. There are Romerias, such as in Águilas, where horseback travellers travel from one church to the other and make floral offerings at each, Totana where the local choir visit the crosses and stop to sing at each, or Cartagena, where crosses are set up throughout the streets in the old quarter by clubs and associations as a focal point for open air bars with music and dancing.

In other areas the Crosses of May have become entwined with broader celebrations, such as in Alhama de Murcia where the fiestas of Los Mayos involve "planting" satyrical "Mayos" figures in the streets as well as the floral crosses,  which the Corremayos, townspeople dressed in colourful jesters outfits visit on the main day of Los Mayos. Its a colourful and happy festival, very popular with expats and families who board the tourist train and enjoy the visit to the various Mayos around the town.

In Abanilla a piece of the true Lignum Crucis is carried in Romería to a sanctuary outside of the town and in the pedanías of Murcia folk music and dancing combine with local traditions to celebrate the arrival of May.

The biggest celebration of the region is at Caravaca de la Cruz, where the fiestas of the Santísima y vera Cruz de Caravaca (Cross of Caravaca) take place, including the spectacular running of the wine horses, which itself is interwoven with the Moors and Christians.

Full details of all of these can be found in the What's on section

Religiously, the festival is rooted in the search by the Byzantine Empress Saint Helena for the cross on which Jesus died, but the popular traditions connected to the festival certainly originate from pagan traditions brought to Spain by the Roman Empire .

Legend recounts that Emperor Constantine I, in the sixth year of his reign, confronted the barbarians on the banks of the Danube, 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  her attempt to find the cross. On Calvary Hill, traditionally considered the site of Jesuss 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. Santa Helena died praying for all believers in Christ to celebrate the commemoration of the day the Cross was found.

Caravaca de la Cruz has three fragments of the lignum crucis, the true cross in a reliquary, the Vera Cruz which resides in the Basilica overlooking the town. Caravaca de la Cruz is one of only 5 Holy Cities in the world due to the presence of this lignum crucis, which was given to the townspeople by the Pope after their own piece fo the true cross disappeared during the Civil War. Caravaca has been granted a Holy year every seven years, the next one falling in 2024.