An Easter weekend concert and rodeo brought thousands of people to Marshalltown on Saturday.

Hosted by Midnight Garden and held at the Central Iowa Fairgrounds, a Sabado de Gloria celebration has been an annual event for more than 15 years. Organizer Luisa Ortega, the owner of Midnight Garden, said she wanted to bring a Mexican Easter tradition to Marshalltown.

She said many towns in the country south of the border will hold festivals to celebrate the end of Lent, the Christian tradition of fasting and charity for 40 days before Easter Sunday. The celebrations which occur on the Saturday after Good Friday are called Sabado de Gloria.

“It celebrates people having fun after Lent, after they’ve been fasting and staying away from certain things such as alcohol or baked goods,” she said. “Some people decide not to go to parties during that time. On Sabado de Gloria, it’s party time. We are done with the promises we made that we’re not going to drink or eat meat or whatever.”

Many Mexican towns have a religious aspect embedded in the annual event, but Ortega steers the Marshalltown event away from that.

“I think that part is done wherever people worship,” she said. “To me, the religious part should be in a religious area. I don’t feel right mixing that with what I’m doing, which is the party part.”

But the event is family-friendly. They sell tacos, sweets for the kids and other traditional event foods while the bands play. They have also incorporated entertainment for children with a big puppet light show and bullriding.

The rodeo company tours with one of the bands – Banda el Recodo – at Ortega’s event, and the band played stylized music for each bull when they burst out of the gate. After the bullriding was completed, the band played for another hour to give people an opportunity to enjoy the music without being distracted by the bulls. Banda el Recodo has been performing for almost 100 years and has toured five continents. The latter is why Banda el Recodo is called The Mother of All Bands.

In the years since Ortega first hosted the Marshalltown Sabado de Gloria, she has made changes and brought additions to the event. It was originally hosted at her other venue, the Midnight Ballroom, for three years. After getting a packed house, Ortega wanted to expand it and utilized the Meadow Lane Mall parking lot. That is when she started toying with the idea of adding a rodeo.

“I started working with the fairgrounds,” she said. “Sometimes we had 300 people, sometimes 500, but we kept at it. It has increased gradually. Last year’s Easter weekend, we had over 3,000 people.”

The people keep coming back because of the welcoming atmosphere of Marshalltown, Ortega said.

“They have told me it feels like they’re coming home when they come to Marshalltown,” she said. “The event here is quiet, it’s family, it’s fun. There isn’t a lot of the negative stuff, like security just trying to push you around. Now that I’ve been doing it for so long, I see a lot fhe same faces. They’re coming from Minnesota, Illinois or Des Moines. I think it’s part of our vibe in Marshalltown. We are welcoming and people pick up on that. I think that’s part of the reason why it’s grown so well.”

Ortega is happy to see the event having a positive impact on other Marshalltown businesses, as well. The attendees will spend money in restaurants, hotels, buy gas. She recalled that a smaller grocery store told her they were bombarded the day after Sabado de Gloria.

“Everybody stays with family members, and they were grilling meat outside,” Ortega said. “They said they had to run to Des Moines and pick up meat, because they ran out. That’s always nice to know that everybody is benefiting, even though it’s a lot of work.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.