On the Shores of the Mediterranean (50 page)

In 1087 the Almoravids entered Spain, and in the space of twenty years their leader, Tachfin, succeeded in imposing his authority on all the emirs of the petty states that had emerged after the break-up of the Caliphate of Cordoba fifty years before – on Granada, Malaga, Tarifa, Cordoba itself, Ronda, Carmona, Seville, Almeria, Murcia, Jativa, Badajoz and finally, in 1102, Valencia, eventually proclaiming himself ruler of Spain and dispossessing the emirs completely.

The Almoravids were succeeded by the Almohads who, in North Africa at least, literally massacred them. The Almohads had their origins in the High Atlas and in the hundred years of their rule (1147–1244/8) they extended their empire to the furthest possible limits in the west. They presided over what was a second Golden Age for the Moors, but after the flight of the last of the dynasty, to Africa in 1232, a fearful Muslim collapse took place in Spain.

In 1236 Ferdinand III of Castile, the Saint, captured Cordoba, the great capital of the Muslim rulers; subsequently he took, or forced to submit to him, Murcia, Granada, Seville, Jerez, Medina,
Sidonia and Cadiz. When he died in 1252, contemplating the invasion of North Africa, the frontiers of his kingdom, Castile, extended to the southern shores of the peninsula on the Strait of Gibraltar. Nevertheless, 240 years were to pass before Granada fell in 1492 to the forces of the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, and the rule of the Moors was finally extinguished.

Late in the afternoon of Holy Saturday, 2 April 1983, the seventh and last day of Holy Week, we lay on a rooftop high above the Plaza Jeronimo de Cordoba near the Church of Santa Caterina in the eastern part of Seville, soaking up the sun which was shining down from a deep blue cloudless sky. Although it was still only the first week of April, here it was already as hot as an English midsummer day.

We were exhausted. We had arrived in Seville seven days previously, early on the morning of Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, in time to see the Procesión de Las Palmas, headed by the Archbishop and the Chapter carrying palms which they later
placed on a
paso
, a processional float, with a statue on it depicting Christ on an ass entering Jerusalem.

This float, popularly known as La Borriquita, was escorted on its four-hour journey from the Church of San Salvador, where it was housed, to the Cathedral, and back again, by children wearing long white robes, belts of woven grass and hoods embellished with the red cross of Santiago. Many spectators carried olive branches as symbols of peace during this procession of the Archbishop.

During these seven days we had seen at least part, in some cases the major part, of fifty-one processions escorting one hundred and three separate
pasos
; fifty-two if the first part, the children’s procession, is considered separate from the second part, the procession of the Sacred Christ of Love, Our Lady of Succour and St James the Apostle, popularly known as El Amor, which is escorted by black-hooded brothers wearing the shield of their Hermandad or Cofradia, as these Brotherhoods are known. None of these processions had lasted for less than four hours. The longest, La Macarena, had lasted for twelve and a half hours, another, Jesús Cautivo, Jesus Captive, had lasted for twelve hours, and that of Cristo de la Sed, Christ of the Thirst, otherwise known as Nervion, after the Barrio, the quarter of Seville from which it comes, eleven and a half hours.

Night and day, except for an hour or so after midday, the great floats, all of them enormously heavy, embellished with silver, some decorated with flowers and bearing sumptuously dressed figures of the Virgin, costing thousands of pounds each year to decorate (the floats and figures are of inestimable worth, a Virgin’s clothing and accessories alone valued at £100,000 ($140,000)), other effigies depicting events in the last six days of the life of Christ, had swayed through the streets, those of the Virgins like great ships illuminated by masses of candles, all borne on the backs of hordes of sweating
porters invisible beneath the velvet draperies, some macabre, some beautiful, some very old, some made as late as the 1970s. If it rains during the procession, the floats are taken back either to their own churches or the nearest available one and the whole thing is called off.

All these figures, however old or new, have been carved and coloured by what can only be described as a school of artists who have always devoted themselves to producing what the Spanish call
simulacros imagenes
, with a skill that they have inherited from the craftsmen of Greece and Rome, who themselves inherited it from Babylon, Egypt and Phoenicia. This art form is based on such exact observation that the end products have somehow ceased to have the attributes of statuary as we think of it but rather resemble waxworks or dead bodies wearing clothing, for these figures, except those of Christ Crucified, are almost always clothed, usually very richly, with real not sculpted clothing.

Looking at these figures, so many of them similar in intention and execution, it is difficult for the layman to know whether he is looking at a work of the sixteenth century, such as the Cristo de Burgos, the oldest documented image, carved by Juan Bautista Vasquez in 1573, one by Marcos de Cabrera, carved in 1575, a seventeenth-century work by Juan de Mesa, Pedro Roldán or Juan Martinez Montañes, or a modern work, done in the fifties, such as the masterly figures carved for the procession of Jesús Cautivo by José Paz Vélez.

In the course of these fifty-two processions, besides seeing Jesus riding into Jerusalem, we had seen him instituting the Eucharist of the Last Supper, kissed by a Judas dressed in yellow, the colour of anathema, while watched by Peter, James, Thomas and John, and praying in the olive grove at Gethsemane.

Arrested, presented to the people by Pilate in the presence of Claudia, his wife, and a band of Negro servants, Roman soldiers
and Jews. Slapped by a Jew at his trial in the palace of Annas, who is seen seated on a throne flanked by a bearer of false witness, another Jew. Sentenced to death surrounded by Roman soldiers and Jews, while Pilate washes his hands and Claudia looks on thinking of something else (Holy Week in Spain is something to be avoided by practising Jews like the Plague). Mocked by Herod.

Scourged. Having the Crown of Thorns placed on his head. Receiving the Cross and embracing it. Falling to the ground unable to support its weight. Helped by Simon of Cyrene. Carrying the Cross, consoling a number of women, among them St Veronica, who has just wiped his face with a cloth that miraculously retains his image. Sitting on a rock while soldiers gamble for his robe. Waiting to be crucified with the two thieves, meanwhile converting one of them.

Crucified. Raised to a vertical position by four Jews. Speaking his last seven words on the Cross, listened to by the Virgin of the Remedies, St John the Evangelist and the Three Marys, Magdalene, Salome and Cleophas. Dying on the Cross, with Mary Magdalene kneeling at the foot of it. Having his side pierced by a soldier mounted on horseback, while others watch. Dead on the Cross, which rises from a bed of red carnations. Removed from the Cross by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and slung in a sheet. Held in her outstretched arms by the Virgin, dead below the empty Cross. Taken to the burial grounds.

So many scourgings, so many crucifixions, so much agony. Too much for us, day after day, although there is no commitment to witness any of it. The Brotherhoods gain nothing at all out of the hundreds of thousands of spectators. No collections appear to be made. Only those who set up stands and provide chairs along the route, presumably the Municipality, and those with good points of view to offer, make anything out of it; these and the providers of food and drink, sleeping accommodation and souvenirs. In this
way the Semana Santa is rather like an extended coronation; but although there is no obligation to watch the processions one can scarcely ignore them, for they quarter the city with a persistence that is unparalleled elsewhere in the Catholic world, even in Spain, outside Andalucia. Here, even the most devout have been known to confess to a surfeit.

Most difficult to become fed up with, and almost impossible for the Spaniards, who are virtually Mariolatrists, are the fifty-two Virgins we have seen up to now (there are more to come), most of them lone figures, all of them with their own floats, some of them accompanied on these always sumptuous vehicles by a diffident, usually moustached, disciple, John.

There are so many Virgins for both men and women to go overboard about, Virgins of Peace, the Broom Bush, Grace and Hope, the Star, Grief, Succour, of the Dew, the Mercies, Health, the Sadnesses, the Afflictions, of Guadelupe, of the Waters, of Grace and Protection, of the Abandoned Ones, of the Anguishes (two of them), the Incarnation, of the Candles, of the Sweet Name, the Sufferings, the Remedies, of Protection, the Palm Leaf, the Rule, of Charity, of the Palm, of the Good End, of the Angels, the Tears of Victory, of Mercy, of the Conception, of Great Pain and Grief, of Hope, of the Presentation, of Montserrat, of Great Pain in her Loneliness, of the O (from antiphons, prayers sung on the Feast of Expectation, all of which begin ‘O, Maria …’), of Loreto, of Villaviciosa, of Pity and so on, almost
ad infinitum
. As Wanda said, something of a confession for a practising member of the Church to make, ‘I’ve had enough Virgins for a bit.’

Even up here on the rooftops, almost level with the belfries of half a dozen churches, one or two of which had been built by the Moors as minarets, it was difficult to get away from them. From far below and far off, in the deep canyons which were the streets of a city that was still partly Moorish, with its pillared inner patios
surrounding fountains that were for them as secretive as anything in Fez (that is if the occupants wanted to be secretive) rose the fanfares of bugles and trumpets and the rolling of drums which accompany the playing of the marches which are peculiar to Holy Week. In this case one of the bands was playing a march called the
Armagura
which was originally composed for the Crowned Virgin of Grief, La Armagura Coronada, and which is played so often that it might almost be regarded as the theme music of the Semana Santa.

These bands were accompanying two of the Brotherhoods that had both set off at 3.30 p.m. from their respective churches where they kept their
pasos
. One, the Brotherhood of the Order of Servitas of Our Lady of Pain, Sacred Christ of Providence, Holy Mary of Loneliness and St Mark the Evangelist, otherwise known as Los Servitas, was by this time, 5 p.m., one and a half hours outward bound from its mother church, the Capilla de los Dolores, near the Plaza de San Marcos in the Barrio of the same name, and was now about to enter the Plaza Encarnaçion on its convoluting course to the Cathedral, which it would reach, unless the procession in front of it was running late, around 6.50 p.m.

The other, La Esperanza de la Trinidad, the Sacramental Brotherhood of the Sacred Decree of the Holy Trinity, Sacred Christ of the Five Wounds, Sacred Mary of the Conception, whose church was La Trinidad in Calle Maria Auxiliadora off the ring road, was now in Calle Juan de Mesa, bound on what appeared to be a collision course with the floats of Los Servitas, an encounter that would take place, unless the organizers averted it, which they would probably succeed in doing, at the entrance to the Sierpes, the narrow tortuous Bond Street of Seville which is also at the beginning of what is known as the Carrera Oficial, Official Route, to the Cathedral, which every procession must follow whatever route it has taken previously. According to the ultra-Catholic,
ultra-Establishment newspaper, the
ABC
, which I was at this moment trying to read, they were due to arrive at this point within five minutes of one another, around 6.15 p.m.

It was time to get ready for the procession of El Réal Hermandad Sacramental del Santo Entierro de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo y Maria Santísima de Villaviciosa, which promised to be rather different from those we had previously seen, as I was to be a participant.

‘Are you sure you want to go?’ I said to Wanda. ‘You’ve seen so many.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I may have had enough Virgins and crucifixions, and I don’t care if I never eat another
pescado frita
or drink another glass of manzanilla, but I wouldn’t miss you in the procession for anything.’

With Wanda clasping the
laissez-passer
signed by the Hermano Mayor, the elected head of the Royal Sacramental Brotherhood of the Holy Burial of Our Lord Jesus Christ and Sacred Mary of Villaviciosa, popularly known as the Santo Entierro, the Holy Burial, in case I lost it, we set off on foot – which is the only way of arriving anywhere on time in Seville in Holy Week – for the church where its images are kept, the Convent of San Gregorio in Calle Alfonso XII.

It was from this same street, or rather a turning off it, that we had seen the floats of the Primitive Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus the Nazarene, the Holy Cross of Jerusalem and Sacred Mary, otherwise known as El Silencio, emerge from the Chapel of San Antonio Abad in the early morning, 1.05 a.m., on Good Friday, Viernes Santo Madraguarda.

The first of its two great
pasos
bore the figure, probably carved at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of Jesus the Nazarene embracing the cross which he had just received into his hands for the journey to Golgotha, with the blood streaming down his face from beneath the crown of thorns. The second bore the Virgin
of the Conception standing on a bed of orange blossom, looking down on the dense crowd through a forest of white candles from beneath a gold-embroidered
palio
, a velvet canopy embellished with precious stones. Weeping, with the simulated tears coursing down her face which was framed in fabulous ivory lace beneath a golden crown, her immense embroidered velvet mantle streaming away behind her, she was apparently unconscious of the absurdly young-looking, conventionally moustached St John who stood by her side looking anxiously at her as though she might faint away. And as the thirty-six Costaleros, the porters who were carrying it, invisible beneath the float, made the difficult shuffling turn towards Calle Alfonso XII, the
palio
and the twelve slender silver columns with its hangings began to oscillate, so that the whole construction appeared to be about to take off into the air.

This was the moment when in other processions of a more popular character, such as that of the Sacred Mary of Hope, known as La Esperanza de Triana, or that of her rival, the Sacred Mary of Hope known as La Macarena, the Virgin would have been greeted with cries of
‘Guapa! O Guapaguapaguapa!’
(‘O beautiful, beautiful, beautiful girl!’) and the air would have been filled with fanfares and the rolling of drums. But because this was El Silencio, the Silent, the oldest of all but one of the Cofradias in Seville, founded in 1340, all that was heard was what are known as the Whistles of Silence, a series of eerie sixteenth- and seventeenth-century airs rendered on oboes, bassoons and clarinets.

Then the
paso
had come to a halt and someone had begun to sing a
saeta
, launching it, like the arrow from which it takes its name, from a balcony high overhead, a form of
cante hondo
and a more austere, ancient form of the flamenco which is itself Andalusian. The origins of the
saeta
have been sought, largely unsuccessfully, among the Moors, the Jews, the gypsies and in the Christian liturgy. They are songs which express faith, hope, desire,
remorse, repentance and, above all, love. An unearthly performance which here in Seville during Holy Week is received either with extravagant enthusiasm or with derision, according to whether it is approved or not approved. There is no middle way.