One of the most lucid and colorful festivity that took place in the Ariguanabo were the San Antonio Abad Patron Saint Festivities. Since the refoundation of the Villa in 1794 they were very famous, foreigners from all over the world came to participate. These celebrations became an ancestral custom for the Ariguanabenses.
On January 17 a great religious feast was celebrated, with a solemn sermon and a mass sung by the most well-known and sacred orators of the surroundings or the capital. This prayer used to refer to the exemplary life and virtues of San Antonio Abad, although welfare, health and abundant crops were also requested for the year that had just begun.
The ceremony was attended by all the city council authorities, aldermen and their president, elegantly dressed. These same authorities presided over the procession in the afternoon, accompanied by a lucid cortege composed of the most notable people of the town and its surroundings. Many students of San Isidro also attended, preceded by a large orchestra. A river of flowers covered the streets where the patron saint would pass.
The Ariguanabenses parties of the Patron Saint lasted about eight days. In the evenings they followed the non-religious festivals with traditional dances and numerous games. The color was so great that all types of damask curtains and fabrics were hung on the facades, windows and balconies, which waved along the flags on all the masts of the Villa. In the doors and facades, they also hung, wild canes and guano pens. The festivities of the Villa were so generous that they were published in the press of the capital.
In the chronicle published in the Diario de La Habana, dated February 8, 1843, its author José Victoriano Betancourt refers to the harmony of the music, the costumes and ornaments used, the education of the ladies and the progress of the Villa at that time. The Patron Saint Feasts constitute for the Ariguanabenses a legend that could be rescued.
