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“You can’t dress in flamenco for a pilgrimage to El Rocío, Bonita,” said Maria Cárdenas, our Airbnb host, with a laugh. “You’ll die in the heat.”
She pinched a thick red cloth between her thumbs and held it up to my face like a specimen. “You see? Heavy tights like these were made for festivals in the bullring in the city of Seville,” he explained. “You need light elastic polyester for pilgrimage – for riding, walking, dancing, sleeping on the grass.”
The Pilgrimage of El Rocío is a high-octane religious spectacle – an annual multi-day festival held in Andalusia, Spain’s southernmost region – with flamenco costumes, caravans and a religious fervor that seems to be growing stronger, even as its influence continues to wane. Catholic Church.
Participants can prepare for months: plan the menu, hire a tractor, organize a caravan. It also requires a choice of clothing that allows the wearer to release himself behind the bush while displaying all the elegance of Princess Goya in Alba.
After studying for a year in Seville in 2012, Kevin, my collaborator, had long dreamed of returning to document the El Rocío pilgrimage, which was canceled two years in a row during the pandemic. My connection with Spain is more recent: I moved to Mallorca last year after deciding that life is too short not to live on a Mediterranean island. Kevin and I often work together on travel assignments, and when he told us about El Rocío, it was easy, because the best way to get to know a new country is to party.
Although we are documenting the 2022 pilgrimage (this year it will be held at the end of May), we are also participating in celebrations. Andalusia – famous for its flamenco dance, cowboy culture and pilgrimage – has a distinct and seductive identity that people in the south of Spain can be proud of.
The El Rocío pilgrimage is perhaps the most powerful visual representation of Andalusian culture, and it is this, like the religious spirit, that drives hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin in the village of El Rocío. Some travel on foot, others atop elaborately decorated caravans. Many are on horseback: the riders are stiff and tightly dressed in wide-brimmed hats, high paseo pants and cropped guayabera jackets.
On our first day, Kevin and I wandered through the Doñana National Park, about 40 minutes south of central Seville, in search of pilgrims we believed to be there. Finally we heard the sound of cowbells ringing, horses clapping, caravan wheels creaking, flamenco guitars, voices singing together. Within minutes, the dusty street had turned into a festival. The caravan drove past. Pilgrims thrust bottles of Cruzcampo beer and slices of cured Ibérico pork into our hands. The singing reached a crescendo.
In Spain, Catholicism is taken seriously. But also beer, ham and cheese – even at 10 am
Many Andalusian towns, cities and villages developed their own pilgrimages – known as romerías, named because pilgrims traditionally walked to Rome – dedicated to their patron saints. But the four-day walk to El Rocío has achieved cult status.
According to legend, a statue of the Virgin Mary was found on a tree trunk hundreds of years ago, in the swamps of the Guadalquivir River. For several centuries, devotion to this shrine was limited to the surrounding towns of Almonte and Villamanrique de la Condesa. But in the 20th century, in the celebration of Pentecost, hermandades (brotherhoods) of pilgrims walked for four days to reach the area – from the area around Seville and Huelva, and finally beyond Andalusia, from Madrid, Barcelona and the Balearic and Canary Islands. At night, the hermandades would camp in the forest, eat together at a long table and dance flamenco around the campfire until the reality of the next day’s 15 miles could not be ignored.
Kevin and I share an obsession with international festivals. His impulse is to take portraits, mine to listen and learn. But wherever we go, Kevin and I tend to pay attention to faces.
In El Rocío, no face is closed to outsiders. We were invited to the caravan; told to sit down and eat stew and slices of watermelon; dragged into flamenco dancing; and instructions to take a siesta after lunch on the grass – otherwise we will “not live until Sunday,” one participant told us. No one was reluctant to be interviewed or photographed. Everyone seems to accept that El Rocío is a spectacle. Our sense of wonder and curiosity is accepted as a sign of respect.
We joined the caravan in the muddy water at Quema, across the Guadiamar River, a tributary of the Guadalquivir. In the town of Villamanrique de la Condesa, every restaurant and bar is full of spectators. (El Rocío is televised like a sporting event throughout Spain.)
On Friday night, the first hermandades arrived in El Rocío, a small town that reminded me of Western movie sets I had seen in California and Arizona. His character is formed by pilgrimage; The more famous hermandades – like Huelva, with 10,0000 pilgrims – have large boarding houses on the edge of town, with convent-like rooms and spacious communal dining and dancing areas. Smaller Hermandade are only looking for short term rentals. Even with our beginner’s Spanish, we were ushered into a whitewashed house and served beer, slices of manchego cheese and slices of cured pork. It struck me that most of the Spanish culinary staples are essentially pilgrim food: rotten control becomes a delicacy.
In El Rocío, we find the religious spirit in the streets, in the Churro huts, in the hermandades themselves. But there is also fervor for fervor’s own sake. I am the Irish daughter of a Presbyterian pastor, raised in a no-frills religious celebration; tea and scones are as decadent as a Presbyterian celebration. In El Rocío, I was intoxicated by pageantry and ritual, and the idea that pilgrimage can and should be a source of revelry.
Friday evening turned into morning, and Kevin and I chatted with two young friends from Madrid – in their 30s, like us. Young people used to want to escape from religious traditions, he said. But El Rocío offers him an escape, he says, from the pressures of modern life.
“I love El Rocío, because it’s the only time my family gets together – no excuses,” said Carmen Mora, 32, who works for a travel technology startup. “It’s healthy to forget about city life for a week – city clothes, technology, work, pressure.”
“It’s good for the spirit to immerse in tradition,” he added.
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