Tembleques – Pollera Head Dress

Panamanian Tembleques

Even though everything in the pollera is beautiful, there is one part of it that typically catches the viewer attention first.

We are referring to those sparklingly white moving elements placed on the “Empollerada” head.  These moving parts are called tembleques and got their name after their movement, the word tembleque comes from the spanish word “tiembla” that mean tremble, and when the empollerada walks or dances they will move and tremble with her.

Tembleques didn’t look like now in the past.  We couldn’t find an exact century or dates of how or when they started, but there are very old pictures that show empolleradas wearing flowers to decorate their head and it is believed that people started to find ways to make these decorations from materials that will last longer than natural flowers.

Some very old tembleques were modest in size and made form fish scales and wire to hold them in place, other used plastic, fine sheets of metal and even gold to make tembleques. Today modern industry has provided a great variety of materials like plastic beads, crystals imitation and even Swarovski crystals to make tembleques.

There is not a rule of the elements or parts to make a tembleque head, but traditionally there were mainly made to imitate flowers on a garden and no long after that animals like butterflies, scorpions, peacocks, humming birds, etc were also introduced.  The number of flowers and animals to use are not exact, but is strongly recommended to keep tembleques very delicate and not exaggerated.

The tradition speaks to white tembleques only, but with time other styles were created to embellish other pollera styles like the Pollera Montuna Santeña or Pollera de Coquitos that are used colored tembleques.  These should also keep the recommendation of not exaggerating the volume and size of them.

The people who make tembleques are called “Temblequeras” and they invest a lot of time and dedication to make these beautiful pieces of art. Depending on the ability and time available of the temblequera a complete set could take up to 4 months to be ready.  The price of a complete well elaborated set won’t be below $500.00 USD and it has been known of tembleques heads that have cost thousands of dollars!

This beautiful embellishment for the Panamanian Pollera is really considered a piece of art and an empollerada will not be complete with out them.