section_path: Culture/Feasts and festivals/San Isidro
section_name: San Isidro
paragraph_text: San Isidro
  
  The local feast par excellence is the Day of Isidore the Laborer (San Isidro Labrador), the patron Saint of Madrid, celebrated on 15 May. It is a public holiday. According to tradition, Isidro was a farmworker and well manufacturer born in Madrid in the late 11th century, who lived a pious life and whose corpse was reportedly found to be incorrupt in 1212. Already very popular among the madrilenian people, as Madrid became the capital of the Hispanic Monarchy in 1561 the city council pulled efforts to promote his canonization; the process started in 1562. Isidro was beatified in 1619 and the feast day set on 15 May (he was finally canonized in 1622).
  
  On 15 May the Madrilenian people gather around the Hermitage of San Isidro and the Prairie of San Isidro (on the right-bank of the Manzanares) often dressed with checkered caps (parpusas) and kerchiefs (safos) characteristic of the chulapos and chulapas, dancing chotis and pasodobles, eating rosquillas and barquillos.