hovering jesus and mary

For every time you celebrate the King of Thailand´s 80th birthday in Bangkok, or join 1 million Spaniards to watch some big sculptures burn down to the pavement, it´s good to make it to a small town for some important holiday. It is was this logic (as well as the lack of accomodation anywhere else) that brought us to Conil de la Frontera for the culmination of Semana Santa (Holy Week). We left Valencia on the 4am bus, and after a series of switches, layovers and long rides, we arrived at this sleepy beach town on the Atlantic coast at about 7:30 in the evening.

The town saunters up from the sea on a low rise, and is comprised of the classic boxy white mediterranean houses aligned at clashing angles. You can have a great time exploring the spiderweb network of passages that are the city, and the orientation along a hill makes it difficult to get lost (though we still managed it once). Though necessarily a tourist town, it is charming, and you could really see the local small town flavor in the Semana Santa celebrations.

Part of the reason for our whole expedition to Spain at this time was to witness the legendary Semana Santa festivities of the Andalucia region. These festivities are the classic processions that you can imagine in your mind, with enormous platforms carrying highly decorated Virgins and Jesus (not sure of the proper way to pluralize ¨Jesus¨) being lugged throughout the whole town. This is exactly what we found in Conil. Almost by accident, we stumbled upon the starting point of the procession both on Thursday night and Friday afternoon. On Thursday night around 11pm, what seemed to be some sort of Jesus and Mary warehouse opened its doors as bulky teens in freshly pressed robes with severely gelled hair nervously prepared to carry the platforms or march in the band. The crowd pressed around, and literally had to be pushed back by the bulk and momentum of the lunging Virgin. Mary came out, covered by a canopy held up by intricate metal banisters, being swayed in time by her team of porters. There was a lot of ceremony, with starting and stopping, setting down and lifting, the swaying left and right, and of course plenty of clapping as each of these tricky maneuvers was successfully accomplished. As Mary wheeled around the corner, Jesus was brought into the staging ground, ready to make his big appearance. Unfortunately, this move coincided with a light spitting of rain that was enough to dampen four or five hairs on my head and cancel the whole procession. Jesus was immediately moved to back from wherever he came from, and Mary was swayed back into the Holy garage behind him. Our senses still being cranked up six notches beyond full volume from the five days of partying, crowds, explosions and burning towers in Valencia, this whole spectacle left us feeling a little disappointed. Fortunately, a bakery caught fire on the walk back to hotel room and offered momentary excitement.

Friday´s procession turned out to be much more worthwhile. By sheer dumb luck, we stumbled up to the town church just as people were beginning to amass for the spectacle. This time, the late afternoon sun streaked across the sky, and the day´s showers had already rained themselves out. After a moderate wait, Jesus came charging out of the church, again having to physically press the crowd back, and scaring Taylor desperately that his structure was going to come toppling down onto us. The Jesus float stopped for a couple of songs to be sung, and then was followed by a band of drums and horns playing the most interesting music; mournful, slow melodies with distinct middle eastern tones and phrasing. The music was probably the most impressive piece of the whole celebration for me. Anyway, after the band came a train of ladies in black, folowed by many dudes in black and purple robes with pointy hats and full faced masks (if you´re thinking this looks like a KKK getup, you´re absolutely right, but I want to try my best to make the point that the similarities are in costume only). Next, the Virgin came out on her own platform, followed by a similar chain of events. The whole thing took about an hour to pass by, but I was convinced they could have cut it down to no more than 18 minutes. This suspicion was confirmed when, after wandering the town and using the internet for a couple of hours, the procession happened to pass us again. I´m still thinking about that music.

As it turned out, time constraints and logistics dictated that we would leave Conil before the actual full Easter Day events, and we ended up spending Easter enroute to and in Morroco.

(Author´s note: though this post is very much in need of photo documentation I will have to add them later from an internet connection that will allow me to. Thank you for your patience.)