Well, this time of year is always a bit...nostalgic for me, as it represents my first trip to Spain. The days leading up to Semana Santa are full of memories, my first impressions of Spain and the adventures I had with oh-so-open eyes when I got here. In addition, as I experience the holiday differently each year, I´m confronted with the strange phenomenon that is this traditional, religious Spanish "holiday," if you can call it that.
My first year here, I remember forcing myself out of a hostal bed with Matt, my travel companion, on Easter Sunday of all days, just to get to the main cathedral and see the procession and mass there (once in a lifetime, right? I guess we can make this one exception and go to church on Sunday!). I remember it was the coldest day of the year (people in the crowd told us), and I remember the incense smell so thick it made me almost want to vomit. I remember feeling no spiritual or religious inspiration from any part of the ceremony. I remember being inconvenienced more than once during the week leading up to Holy Sunday, from shops all being closed or ridiculously expensive, and fighting crowds everywhere we went. But it being first time, it was all kinda fun too.
The next year, I remember getting the hell out of Dodge: in anticipation of 9 full days off work, I booked it to the beach and never looked back. There was almost no sign of Semana Santa that year where I was, which I now realize is because the Costa del Sol is full of British retirees who´ve eradicated (intentionally or not?) the Spanish culture all along the coast. I remember sand and sun, and not much else, from my second Semana Santa.
The third Semana Santa, last year, I remember staying put in Granada and trying to save money. I remember the inconvenience of the shops all being closed again, not having food readily available. I remember the hordes and getting to know my new friend, Simone, who lived with me at the time and had just arrived in Spain a few months earlier. I saw Semana Santa through her eyes a little, as we searched for pizza one afternoon and were surprised to find ourselves smack in the middle of a procession. She smiled and played with the people, darting her eyes around and taking it all in. Seeing Simone so entranced by her first procession, I felt a little guilty for wanting to simply escape the crowd. She gave me a bit of patience, just by enjoying it all a little.
And this year, my fourth and perhaps final Semana Santa (I plan on leaving Spain and Europe at the end of this academic year/summer), I notice more the inconvenience and crowds, the prices shooting up, and people becoming just a little bit more uptight. I realize now, reflecting on my previous Semana Santas, that my place and mental perspective at the time plays such a huge part in my emotional response to the memory. At the moment, I´m stuck on a rainy day, the 2nd to last of my 9-day vacation from work, in my apartment which is cosy but bored to tears and without money to do anything about it. The people in my life are mostly out of town, and I´ve got all this time on my hands but no productive ideas to put it to use. I´m cursing Semana Santa, but that´s only a coincidence because I happen to be bored and in dire need of SUN.
Yesterday we got an unexpected surprise when two friends who live super close to my house came over, and we drank and played a game for a few hours while discussing all the Semana Santa mayhem (a procession was going on just outside my window at the time). My friend Pourri, a Spanish girl, told us in some pueblos and even here in the city center, after some processions, there are people who go crawling on hands and knees after the idols, repenting and grovelling before their God. She says they do this for themselves, that it´s not a part of "making a show" of their repentence - hence the reason for not participating in the processions themselves. It made me remember my first Semana Santa with Matt, standing in Tarifa in the freezing cold, watching a procession of only children carrying an idol, barefoot in the streets. I was shocked: what do 10-12-year-olds know of repentence?? Is contracting an infection a worthy price for their spiritual well-being? It would appear so. I´m humbled by the hold that religion, in particular traditional Catholicism, still has on (some) people here in Spain. My Spanish friend, MariMar, told me the other day that when she was young, even a teenager, her parents always forced her and her sister to attend mass - they didn´t have to go with their parents, but they had to show up, and if they didn´t, the neighbors and people from the pueblo would tattle on them to their parents. I wonder if there are still parents who do this, or if that´s something that changed with the last generation - most of the young Spanish students I teach aren´t even remotely religious, something I attributed to perhaps the globalization of Capitalism since most of these students are born of wealthy parents who don´t need God anymore now they´ve got the "dollar." It´s interesting, anyway. The generation gap here, from all the 2nd- and 3rd-person accounts I´ve gathered in my 3 years in Spain, seems much bigger than in the States. It makes sense, given Spain´s relative young "age" in the non-dictatorial world.
Well then, writing a blog was a useful achievement for Semana Santa. Maybe I´ll pick up the guitar here in a bit, maybe take a walk. Holy Week is good for leisure, this I´ve learned above all. Now if only I were a person who knew what to DO with leisure time ;)
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