The story
La Griteria Leon in Leon
Each December 7, Leon hosts the original and most historically significant version of La Griteria, Nicaragua's shout-based Marian celebration. At sunset, cathedral bells mark 6 p.m. and residents call out Quien causa tanta alegria, answered by thousands shouting La Concepcion de Maria, before families visit house-to-house altars for songs, sweets, and fruit.
Every December 7, cities and towns across Nicaragua erupt into one of the country's most beloved religious traditions, La Griteria, but it is in Leon, the colonial city in the country's Pacific northwest, where the celebration is understood to have originated and where it retains its deepest historical roots.