The Virgin comes down

I drove over to Novelda yesterday to see La bajada de la Virgen. I'd never seen this particular procession and I'm always up for a good romería. The idea of a romería is that a saint, well the carved statue that represents a saint, is moved from one place to another in a procession - usually from some sort of chapel to a parish church or vice versa. Normally the saints are carried on the shoulders of the faithful using a stretcher like base but not always, in la Palma for instance the saint rides in a cart. There are all sort of variations. The shrine where this particular saint, Mary Magdalene, came from is on la Mola Hill so she was brought down; bajada implies coming down, subida is when the saint goes up the hill.

The style of a romería can vary, some are pretty large scale like San Pancrecio in Sax, San Isidro in Salinas or the Virgen de la Nieves between Aspe and Hondón de la Nieves. Several are much smaller scale including very local ones like moving the Virgen de la Asunción from Caballusa to Pinoso and back or taking la Fatima up and down Monte Cabeço. If you want to see sheer madness the romería associated with el Rocio in Andalucia is the one - religious fervour turned pitch battle. It's worth a bit of YouTubery to see it!

Anyway Novelda was due to start at 7pm from the santuario up on la Mola. I thought I'd leave Culebrón around 6pm, park in the car park by the castle on La Mola have time to take a few snaps as the Virgin set off with maybe a couple of hundred people in attendance. I expected to be home in an hour or so. 

When I got to Novelda the town was under a state of siege. Roads were closed everywhere. Local Police and Civil Protection moved around purposefully. Parking spaces had to be fought for. Obviously this thing was bigger than I'd expected. In fact I reckon that half of Novelda was there. The crowds were impressive and to be honest I had no idea what was going on. The road up to the castle and sanctuary, Paseo de los Molinos, had a few stalls along its length selling beer and water and candles. There were promotional tents for dance clubs and most of the big houses along the route were hosting pool parties. Lots and lots of young people had matching t-shirts which I presumed were simply unofficial peñas, often just friendship groups, but they may have been tied in with the Moros y Cristianos festivals that are going on this week in the town. I wondered about asking but I never quite got around to it. I don't like to expose my appalling Spanish and, anyway, my mum told me not to talk to strangers.

When the Virgin came into view I was a bit surprised. Those teddy bears you can win at the fair are often bigger. As she progressed there were lots of ¡Vivas! - Hurrah the Virgin of Novelda - Hurrah. Hurrah Mary Magdalene - Hurrah and so on. I was wandering along close to the Virgin's carriers and every now and again something would happen. Maybe there were a bunch of people forming human towers to delight the Virgin. Or maybe she would dive into the spectators when she saw someone alongside the road in a wheelchair. The Virgin got close, the wheelchair user stretched out to touch the Virgin. I saw no actual miracles. As she passed some of the houses along the route there would be a volley of fireworks. Every so often Mary Magdalene would be set down on a tabletop, brought out of one of the local houses by well wishers, so that people could rub their mass cards against the little figure or lift their babies up to touch the statue.

When the Virgin passed the junction which led to where my car was parked I decided to let her go on her way. I did notice though that the candle sellers were doing brisk business. Presumably a candlelit procession would be part of the event later. 

¡Costaleros! - ¡al cielo con el!

Easter in Spain is spectacular. Every town has its own Easter. The floats, religious carvings, rolled along, or, much more impressively, borne on the shoulders of men, and nowadays women, along time honoured routes. Some people are in it for the religion, some for the culture, the tradition, or maybe it's just an opportunity to collect bags and bags of sweets. Some of the processions are joyous, some are military, some verge on the bizarre whilst others are organised chaos. I've not seen many, maybe twenty different towns, a few famous ones on the telly and whilst each is similar none is the same. But I'm not out on the streets now. I'm not listening to a plaintiff saeta sung from a balcony or watching mantilla wearing women or bare footed Nazarenos. There will be, almost certainly be no silent and unlit streets and no black hoods as Thursday becomes Friday when death is the order of the day. All because it's raining.

There are associations that fund raise and work all year for Semana Santa, for Holy week. We were in Jumilla this morning and we saw two very ordinary garages where people were preparing religious statues for their outings. In the Museo Jesús Nazareno about a dozen people were working on the floats, arranging flowers, fitting candles, hoovering and generally smartening up whilst lots of well wishers and lookers on came and went.

It was drizzling when we went for lunch but when we came out the streets were awash. We checked Facebook and there was the message to say that the processions had been cancelled. All that work wasted. The opportunity to process gone. I suppose as well as the potential damage to the statues, their clothing and the float in general there is also a potential danger of runaway floats or of statues carried on shoulders crashing to the ground as the carriers lose their footing. It seems a terrible shame though and I really feel sorry for all the people involved.

We hoped that it might not be raining in Pinoso but a Twitter message said no for the 8pm outing. There is still the vaguest possibility that the Cristo de la Buena Muerte will be lofted skyward as he leaves the Parish Church in the darkened streets of Pinoso at midnight tonight followed by hundreds of people carrying candles but I'm not that hopeful.

The title is something like: Bearers - to heaven with him! It's a cry to the people carrying the "Christ of the Good Death."

I'm pleased to say I was wrong. I went out for midnight and the procession was on. Leaden skies but no rain. As it turns out it was a temporary truce. The rain came back with a vengeance and all of the Good Friday processions in the area were cancelled. On Saturday morning it is still pouring down

All squishy

There's a certain tendency to euphoria sometimes. It would happen from time to time driving across the fens or maybe with the MGB in the Cotswolds. Just feeling glad to be there, to be passing through. It happens a lot here. As I drive across some Spanish landscape with, maybe, high hills, or never ending plains or, perhaps, just watching that ochre yellow dust trail as a car or van drives along some dirt track I start grinning for no particular reason.

Maybe it's my age but nowadays I've got to the point where small pleasures cheer me up quite as easily as things on a grander scale. Maybe it's always been like that. Lots of the films that I've liked most across my lifetime of cinema going have been the ones that are classed as independent film.

There are lots and lots of celebrations in Spain. They are everywhere if you look. I wonder if they have a more obvious impact in small towns and villages. The centre of Pinoso is more or less closed off for the eight or nine days of the fair and fiesta in August. We were in Bilbao once, at Easter, and a parade was routed down one side of a dual carriageway whilst traffic continued to flow on the other carriageway - the place is simply too big to stop because of an Easter parade. I thought the penitents looked lost and out of place in a way that they don't as they invade the streets of Jumilla or Hellín. Mind you they close a lot of the centre of Valencia to traffic by the Fallas, Alicante for Hogueras and Murcia for the Spring Festival so I could well be wrong.

Lots of the events are religious in basis, Catholic in fact. Not a lot of Divali or Eid celebrations in the streets here. Often, when I say to Maggie, "Do you fancy coming to see the san Antón stuff in Villena?" or "What about going to see the sawdust carpets in Elche de la Sierra for Corpus Christi?," she'll answer "I'm not a Catholic." Well, neither am I but I'm beginning to really like some of the smaller scale, home grown parades and what not. Actually I think that for most Spaniards the events aren't that religious either; they are more cultural or traditional or just theirs.

Pinoso fiestas is full of happenings. Fireworks and folk dancing here, mascletàs and vermouth sessions there and big events like the concerts and the fancy dress parade. And my favourite event? - the flower offering. Old costumes, lots of flowers and heading to the church to lay them at the feet of a carved wooden statue in the church, with the inevitable mass - not that I've ever been to the mass. Strange choice. I know what I think the reason is. I think it's because I'm soppy. It's like that line in Wonderful World about shaking hands. In the ofrenda there are little groups - from the villages and from organisations but there also seem to be family groups and just, well, people. They wave at their pals as they pass, they break rank to say hello, the smiles are enormous. The pleasure is infectious.

I went to see a little procession in Chinorlet last night. Chinorlet is only about 3kms from our house but it belongs to Monóvar rather than to Pinoso. I didn't know which figures were being moved about so I asked Google. The first result was the 1998 fiesta programme. Heaven knows why. It gave me the answer though. Twenty years ago the procession was at the same time on the last Sunday of the fiestas. The billing says Solemn procession of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sainted Virgin of the Rosary. Solemn? Well sort of. There were a lot of candles and nice frocks and suits for some of the men alongside a couple of second commandment graven images. The statues are on either wheeled floats or carried on strong shoulders and backs. All through this little village, of fewer than 200 people, there were knots of people sitting on chairs outside their homes, standing around chatting, passing time waiting for the procession. I suppose that "everyone" who has a weekend home in Chinorlet was there over the weekend.

It's a bit odd. I'd decided to write this piece yesterday evening suggesting that this was something about as Spanish as mantillas and peinetas. This morning, on my Facebook feed, there was a photo of a bunch of people loading a carved catholic figure into the back of a decorated pickup truck. I presume that they were setting off on what is called a romeria here in Spain. The photos were from my brother in law from when he passed through Messajanes in Portugal. It reminded me that I've seen those carved virgins making the rounds in the background of lots of Sergio Leone and Robert Rodriguez films. But, who cares about facts? The next time I watch the Virgin of the Assumption heading up the little road to Caballusa or another Virgin trekking from Aspe to Hondón de las Nieves I'll think that I'm watching something as Spanish as it gets and I may well grin.

Not just Cadbury's Cream Eggs

I think it was Catworth. There was a deconsecrated church and a theatre group called something like Reduced Theatre. Very reduced, just one man. Dressed as an Anglican vicar, he filled time as he waited for this evening's speaker, a speaker who will never arrive. Rural theatre. The ersatz vicar at one point bemoans the heavenly future of someone he knows - a Wesleyan and a Geologist - enough to consign anyone to a fiery eternity. My baptism took place in a Wesleyan church; my degree is in geology. The Cub Scout pack I briefly belonged to met in a Methodist Hall. The Grammar school I went to sang the Winston Churchill preferred version of Who Would True Valour See and we would all troop to the Anglican Church on Ascension Day. But that was closing in on 50 years ago now.

Now Easter in the UK, for me at least, was basically about chocolate eggs. I'm told it's also about rabbits now. That and a Bank Holiday for workers or the end of one term for people involved in Education. Not a lot of religion. Not a lot of cocks crowing thrice or Pontious Pilate and nothing about Veronica, the woman who wiped Jesus's face on the way to Calvary.

In Spain it's different. People still think Spain is a very religious, a very Catholic, country. The  statistics don't bear that out but nearly all Spaniards are brought up in a country that is conditioned by Catholocism, by rituals and customs related to the Roman Catholic Church, even if the number of practising Catholics, especially amongst younger Spaniards, is very low.

As a consequence Easter provides an incredible display of religiousness that fills the streets of Spain. It also fills the aeroplanes with people setting off on holiday but that's a different story. The variations on the Easter story are endless and that's where my ex Wesleyan, Methodist, Anglican and long forgotten religious indoctrination puts me at a severe disadvantage. On the TV news there are quick stories from all around the country of famous carvings, religious tableaux, graven images, carried through the streets by groups who form around them and maybe about the personalities who are involved in the groups. So maybe you have a carving called something like Our Chained Lord or the Black Virgin. This will be a wooden carving, possibly carved hundreds of years ago. or maybe in the 1940s after the original was burned or lost in the Civil War. The carving itself will be polychromed and dressed and go onto an ornate platform which may be fitted with wheels or carried through the streets on pained shoulders. The people who escort the figure often wear the tall pointed hats to hide their identity; the idea is that the people are indistinguishable, rich or poor, young or old. All together to pay homage. Not everyone wears pointy headgear. Women wearing mantillas and Roman soldiers are pretty common but there can be almost anything from people in doublet and hose or blacked up through to flying angels.

Your carving may go out on the streets on a couple of days during Holy Week or it may be out every day. It depends. Some groups, brotherhoods in translation for lots of them, may have several pieces of statuary so they go out with different floats on different days. The routes, the variations, from joyous to silent vigils vary from day to day. The discipline of the week may disappear with the joy of The Sunday of Resurrection or it may be that, Friday apart, the parades are as much about distributing sweets to the children amongst the spectators as they are about religious observance. The handling of the big floats may be of supreme importance with the dipping, reversing and lifting of the two or three ton floats being roundly applauded or it may be only of passing interest. Every town has its customs, its traditions and its idiosyncrasies from burning Judas to running at full tilt with the float of Mary on your shoulders, as she rushes to meet her risen son.

In the years we've seen lots of processions in lots of towns. This year we've been out in Pinoso, Jumilla and Albacete. In Albacete we went to see the Encounter, the part of the story where Jesus, fresh from the tomb, meets his mother on Easter Sunday. Two parades from opposite parts of the town bring in different imagery. In Jumilla it was the solemnity of Good Friday and for the rest we were in Pinoso including the procession from Thursday night to Friday morning where the lights of the town are turned off, muffled drums beat solemnly and black robed penitents carry just one float, the Christ of the Good Death, through the streets. The float is accompanied by lots of ordinary people carrying candles.

As an event I liked Jumilla best, overall Pinoso was my favourite though because it's ours, through our streets and with people we know. So the bronze to Albacete.