Fiesta de La Tirana

The Fiesta de La Tirana is Chile’s largest religious festival, where the tiny desert town of La Tirana is flooded with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to honor the Virgen del Carmen. The festival’s unique Andean and Catholic mix is rooted in the legend of Ñusta Huillac, an Incan princess known as “La Tirana” (the tyrant) who fell in love with a Spanish prisoner and converted to Christianity before her death. The key attractions are the massive, colorful dance groups (bailes) performing energetic masked dances like the iconic Diablada, which culminate in a grand procession on July 16th.