Fiestas Patronales de San Martin

San Martin, a district within greater San Salvador, celebrates its fiestas patronales in honor of San Martin Obispo, Saint Martin of Tours, whose feast falls November 11. Festivities run roughly November 1-12, with carroza float parades, mechanical fair rides, and, in recent years, a Concurso de Catrinas costume contest and a nighttime quema de toritos.

San Martin's fiestas patronales honor a saint whose story has resonated across the Catholic world for over a thousand years: Martin of Tours, a fourth-century Roman soldier who, according to the most famous telling, encountered a freezing beggar at the gates of Amiens and cut his own military cloak in half with his sword to share it, a gesture of charity that later led him into the priesthood and eventually the bishopric of Tours in Gaul.