Community Corner
Sunday's Portuguese-American Parade Almost As Old As the City
The annual "Holy Ghost Festa" parade Sunday continued a decades-old tradition that was recently memorialized in one of El Cerrito's new historical sidewalk markers.
A hallowed El Cerrito tradition — the Holy Ghost Festival parade — made its way Sunday from St. John's Hall on Portola Drive to on San Pablo Avenue. The parade is so much a part of the city’s history that it has a historic marker dedicated to it outside the church. The marker is one of installed by the city in May in the sidewalks along San Pablo.
The marker says the Holy Ghost Festival was started in Portugal by Queen Izabel to celebrate the end of a famine in 1296 and has been celebrated each June in El Cerrito by Portuguese-Americans since the 1920s with a parade and other festivities. El Cerrito was incorporated as a city in 1917.
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