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Portuguese community celebrates Festa of the Holy Spirit in San Luis Obispo

Posted at 6:52 PM, Jun 16, 2019
and last updated 2019-06-17 00:41:53-04

People in San Luis Obispo celebrated Portuguese culture Sunday, at the 107th Holy Spirit Festa.

The event commemorates the Portuguese Festa of the Holy Spirit.

It goes back to the 13th Century story of Queen Isabel who prayed to end a nation-wide famine and promised to make the poorest girl of the land queen for a day.

Every year after that, Portugal would have a feast and feed the people for free and that tradition has now happened in the Central Coast for more than 100 years.

“My grandfather did it, my dad did and I am doing it, my brothers and my sisters we’ve all been involved all of our lives, so it is just something we do, we come and are here, meet our friends and family and kind of a gathering of our culture,” said Harold Oliveira.

A lot of the people who were at the event are from islands off the Portuguese coast.

Oliveira says it is nice to be able to celebrate their culture even though Portugal is far away.