Seville Snapshots: Who’s That Nazareno?

Smell that? It’s incense. Feel that? That’s some sevillano whose trying to push his way past you.

Yes, amiguitos, Holy Week is upon us, the stretch of time between Viernes de Dolores until Easter Sunday where sevillanos dress in their finest, women don enormous combs and black lace veils and pointy capirote hats dot the old part of town. The faithful spend all day on their feet, parading from church to Cathedral and back with enormous floats depicting the passion, death and resurrection of Christ.

I’m not much of a capillita, but ten days of religious floats means ten days of travel for me.

That said, I’m off to Dubrovnik, Croatia and the Bay of Kotor, Montenegro, country #30 on my 30×30 quest. Where will you be during Semana Santa? Do you like Holy Week, or would you rather get your fix in a Holy Week bar?

My Favorite Holy Week Bars in Seville

Danny and I decided to make one last stop for the night, mostly fueled by our bladders than our ganas for another beer. I ordered a Coke and dipped into the bathroom while Danny paid.

Two minutes later, as I left, the lights had been lowered, and Danny looked pale under the glow of a projector. He pointed to a screen, which showed an image of a bloody Jesus from a black-and-white film.

“Oh, you get used to that,¨I cooed, but he had already downed his beer and was halfway through the door. Novatos.

“Not cool, Cat. We’re no longer friends.”

For me, the week-long revelry that surrounds Seville’s Holy Week has meant just a ten-day travel break for me. Living in Triana’s vortex of cofradías meant that braving Semana Santa, locked inside my house while life-sized depictions of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ passed below my window. Paso de pasos, quite frankly.

Still, I have become more and more fascinated in the pageantry and culture of Holy Week, and often take guests to bars full of musty busts of the Virgin Mother, spiderweb-covered chalices and black and white photos of anguished Christs to explain the parts of the cofradía and their symbolism. Plus, I kinda love having Jesus watch me have a cold glass of beer and snack of olives, I guess?

Bar Santa Ana – Calle Pureza, Triana

Far and away my favorite of the bunch is Bar Santa Ana. It’s the typical old man bar around the corner from your flat where you feel intimidated to walk into, but secretly have always wanted to – dozens of images of the nearby Esperanza de Triana and San Gonzalo brotherhoods. Bullfights are run on TV while you sip your beer, tabbed up right in front of you on the bar, and the countdown to Palm Sunday hangs over your head while you eat from a huge tapas menu.

La Freqsuita –  Calle Mateos Gago

With a name like the fresh one, La Fresquita has a lot to live up to with its beer. Still, it’s served cold and often accompanied with olives or even a pocket calendar. The small space – its biggest downside – is covered floor to ceiling in pictures of processions and a countdown to Palm Sunday. Since the bar is right off of the main tourist sites and centrally located on Mateos Gago, many patrons spill out onto the sidewalk in front of the bar.

Kiosko La Melva – Manuel Siurot, s/n (at the cross of Cardenal Ilundain). Hours depend on the boss, Eli.

My weekday bar is always Kiosko La Melva. Once a shack used to provide workers from the ABC Newspaper offices with their midday snacks and beers, the small structure is unbeatable for cold beer (which only costs 1€!) and small, delectable fish sandwiches. Eli and Moises, the wise cracking buddies who man the bar during the mornings and evenings, collect memorabilia from Semana Santas past to fill the bar’s small interior. Their favorites? The Jesus del Gran Poder and la Macarena, who are associated with the Real Betis football club! You can take the 1 or the 3 bus to the bar, which is located near the Virgen del Rocio Hospital. Closed when raining, Saturday nights and all day Sunday.

Garlochí – Calle Boteros, 26, Alfalfa.

Seville’s tackiest bar deserves a mention here, although it’s become a bit of a tourist attraction. Wafts of incense arrive to the street as a lifelike Virgin Mary, eyes towards the heavens, guards the door. The plush decor and aptly named drinks – like Christ’s Blood – make it a favorite among tourists, but there’s a “Garlochi Lite” next door with cheaper drinks and not so many eyes starting at you as you pound your cervezas.

As a non-capillita, I had to ask my dear friend La Dolan for her top picks for Semana Santa bars around the city. She told me of Carrerra Oficial, just steps from Plaza San Lorenzo and the Basilica del Jesus del Gran Poder that has put a replica of the famous church’s facades as part of its decor. The bar is on Javier Lasso de la Vega, 3.

Have you ever experienced Semana Santa in Seville? Or been to a Holy Week bar here?

Seville Snapshots: The Life, Death and Rebirth of an Orange Tree

A round lump rests each year at the bottom of my stocking. This gift, a California orange, is something we get every year from my grandfather, who signed us up to get a huge crate every December, even though he’s been gone for years.

It’s hard not to think of him when I see the beauties growing on the trees just outside my door. A dull smack, and one hits the ground rolling. While they’re not to be eaten in Seville (they’re used to make bitter marmalade), we often pick them up and make a cheap air freshener out of them. Just like a bullfight is characterized by three acts, culminating in the final faena, so is the life and death of the naranjas, whose final rebirth is a fragrant flower called azahar.

Orange trees enjoy the temperate, rainy winters in Seville. Come mid-February, the thunks become more frequent as workers use metal poles to dislodge the naranjas from their trees. The fruit is then gathered into large crates or burlap sacks and shipped off to Merry Old England.

Within days, the springtime rains bring along the small, silky buds that pop out amongst the waxy leaves. Sometimes they open early, filling the nighttime with a clean scent. My Irish friend claims they always come up around St. Patrick’s Day, so my nose has been upturned for the last few days, waiting.

Like all things springime in Seville, the azahar petals fall to the street within a few weeks, and the tempratures shoot up into the high 20s. The azahar is overpowered by incense from the Holy Week parades, and then by fried fish and sherry during the April Fair.

My friend told me that if I liked Seville during the Autumn and Winter, I’d swoon in the springtime.

She was right.

The Sagrada Familia: Gaudi’s Obra Maestra

The Sagrada Familia is perhaps one of the most well-known construction sites in the world, as well as one of the longest running. Intended to be the obra maestra of Antoni Gaudí, his untimely death leaving the construction site nearly 100 years ago launched the church into the epicenter of a battle over how closely to finish Gaudí’s work.

Nature inspired Gaudí as a child, and his grand temple is a testament to his religious devotion and belief that no man can create what God has done upon the Earth. Every detail of the facade and the towers were conceived bearing that in mind, though recent advances in technology have led to a stray away from the original blueprints. The church is slated to be finished in 2026, 100 year after its mastermind’s death.

On my first visit to the Sagrada Familia in 2005, a hangover dampened our plans to make it to the site early, but we lucked out that the hot July day meant that tourists had taken to the water. The line snaked halfway around the block, but the cavernous church provided refuge from the hot sun. It would be five years before the cranes would be removed, the sound of the drills quelled and the makeshift floorboards that served as walkways around a construction site would be replaced with smooth marble floors.

I went a few years later with my grandmother, and not much more work had been done. On my most recent trip to Barcelona, I could marvel in Gaudí works that partially redeem the city for me. While we scoffed at the thought of paying 20€ for the Casa Batlló, devoting an entire morning to the Sagrada Familia and paying the price of entrance and an audio guide was a no-brainer.

I’m not very religious or even very spiritual, but the emptiness and the contrast of colors, mixed with the soaring buttresses, was uplifting. We spent well over 90 minutes before taking the elevator up to the top of one of eight towers.

If you go: The Sagrada Familia is located in the Eixample neighborhood, and metro lines L2 and L5 serve the Antoni Gaudi plaza, making a stop at the station called Sagrada Familia. The basilica, museum and towers are open daily from 9am until 6pm in the winter, and until 8pm in the summer. You’ll be charged 13,50€ for entrance (11,50€ if you’re a student or senior), or 18€ for an audio guide with entrance fee. The towers will run you an extra 4,50€, and you will be assigned a specific time to avoid lines (we were able to sneak in 15 minutes earlier).

Alternately, you can skip lines and receive discounted tickets for all of Barcelona’s big sites via TicketBar by clicking here.

The temple was consecrated in 2010 and mass in now celebrated regularly. Many thanks to Meritxell of Tourism with Me for her help with where to eat nearby. We had a filling Catalan menu at Juanma, located at C/Lepant, 280. If you’re looking for a place to stay, look no further than Barcelona Home for great apartment rentals.

Uncovering the Romania Diaries

Every so often, I feel the need to open up my three big boxes of old lesson plans, phone bills and the millions of photocopies I’ve made of my college degree to clean it out. The new academy job gave me good reason to dive in and see what I had by way of something-more-advanced-than-colors-and-numbers worksheets.

Stashed between adverbs of frequency and a few documents from the Spanish Treasury, I found 12 hand-written pages from the long rides in the ancient Dacia the six of us took in Romania. While Bryan drove and Matt read aloud from Dracula, we crisscrossed the lonely highways of the country that produced my childhood idol, Nadia.

I jumped on the Romania trip after it had been planned and dubbed “Gypsies v. Vampires.” Living in Spain, the impression we often get of Romanians is that they’re undocumented, dangerous and jail-bound. In fact, when I presented my American passport at Barajas for a 2 a.m. flight, the customs agent scoffed and asked, “Why are you spending Holy Week in Romania?”

I gestured to his flipping of my pages, looking for a blank spot to affix the stamp. “Because I’ve been just about everywhere else.”

Arriving at 7.am. and disembarking, I was completely turned around, faced with a language with strange characters, barely anyone fluent in English and no Romanian currency. I found a bus willing to take euros and got off right in the center, on the street below Ceausescu’s Palace of Parliament – the stamp of Communist grey and menacing to me. Gypsies slept under fountains and women in headscarves sold flowers in front of St. Katherine’s Church.

As soon as we’d picked up the rental car and driven out of the city (a 90-minute odyssey in itself), the industrial Communist machine we’d expected became green fields that gave way to mountains, in which was nestled Sinai Palace.

As we settled into life in the car, we hit some of the major cities in Transylvania – Brasov, Sighisoara, Bran. After spending a few days exploring fortified churches and hilltop castles, we set off for Maramures, the region that borders Ukraine and retains much of the character it’s had for the last 200 years.

My notes become suddenly optimistic, more reflective and the handwriting haggard as I struggled to write down all of what I saw. The observations of our arrival follow.

WEDS

Up early. Loaded up on snacks and left (Sibiu) and its concrete jungle out towards the mountains to Cluy, where we had kebab lunch. Immediately greeted by green hills, streams, fewer cars, Roma, people in kerchiefs and on bikes. Peasant land.

Tunes: 90s Europop CDs bought at a gas station and Nate’s iPod.

cows, sheep, puppies and CRUXIFXES

Sacal the most rural: potholes, buggies, few cars. Women dress in black sweaters and skirts with kerchiefs, aprons and ankle booties.

Arrived to George’s house, 4 doors down from new and old churches. Met by Victor, family dachshund. […] dinner prompt at 7 p.m.: water, plum and apple brandy, meatballs, horseradish from garden, stuffed eggs, salad, beets, veal with potatoes and mushrooms, walnut bread.

Walked at dusk to cemetery. Group of school kids sat singing with back-clad monk. Women still out attending the deceased, many of whom died young, chattering and chirping. Mass began shortly after, but we stayed to watch the stars turn on.

Big George goodnight and to sleep.

THURS

8am bfast – bread with cheese and meat, pearish apple juice, crepes with honey and jam. Attended to us as if kings.

Hiked through Botiza, past the stream, wooden houses, wells. Evident the way of life here has remained. Many elderly, few young.

Monastery of Botiza – wooden gate with fish, rope motif. Up hill, a complex of wooden buildings and small graveyard. Mass happening so church closed, I stood on a wooden bench to peer inside saw gold inlaid chandelier crowned with Jesus and 12 apostles.

Overlooked lush valley.

George told us to follow power lines to PI, so we hiked up and over  hill. At crest we were stopped by peasants on a cart. Communicating in our native languages, we told them we were American and heading to IP. They pointed and sent us off.

Had to pass thru cemetery to get to wooden church with w/ wolf’s tooth roof. Said to be one of the most interesting with “fiery depictions of hell” (LP), but it was locked. Walked back and hopped into car to drive to Sapanta on Ukranian Border to Merry cemetary.

Have you ever been to Romania? What were your impressions?

For the Love of the Dove: El Rocío

I’ve never been one for Bucket Lists, but often set travel goals for myself. When I was 20, I decided to do a 25 before 25, making a list of my top-five destinations when I moved to Spain two years later. Twenty-twelve meant no resolutions, just a few ideas for travel goals during 2012: one new country, one off-beat travel activity and one nationally recognized festival, in Spain or not.

It’s the end of May and I’ve just completed my goals. I think I shall hashtag this as #travellover. Last weekend, my sevillana half orange, La Dolan, and I went to visit Spain’s lushiest Virgin Mother, La Virgen del Rocío.

The festival of El Rocío is one-part religious pilgirimage, one-part full-blown fair and two parts party: those devoted to the Virgen, known as the Lady Of the Marshes or the White Dove (Nuestra Señora de Las Marismas, for the hermitage’s proximity to the protected swampland of Doñana National Park, or the Blanca Paloma), make a pilgrimage from their towns to the immaculate white church outside the village of Almonte. This can be done on foot, on horseback, or by riding in oxen-driven carrozas, a type of temporary covered wagon. Arriving on or before the Saturday of Pentecost, often sleeping and eating outdoors, the rocieros then gather in El Rocío for a series of masses, parades and the famed salta a la reja.

We arrived just before noon on Pentecost Sunday. I wore my celestial blue traje de gitana, coral flower on my head, while Cait opted for a breezy skirt. It was over 90º out, but the rocieros were in their typical costumes: the women in trajes de gitana or faldas rocieras, a skirt with ruffles suited for walking, and high leather boots. The male counterpart is a traje corto, with tight cropped pants made for horseback riding. I made a face at Cait, suddenly very hot with the sleeves of my dress and restricted in movement.

The whole village of El Rocío is like a town straight out of a Wild West film set – hitching posts set in front of modest houses, horses clopping gallantly around the sandy streets. It was difficult to walk with my espadrilles while dodging carriages, and sand soon filled my shoes.

As we neared the stark white church, a beacon against the bright blue Andalusian sky, we decided to visit the village’s most famous resident before going any further. As we neared, the tamboril drums and simple flutes that characterize the sevillanas rocieras grew to a furor, and the crowd standing under the scalloped entrance of the hermitage suddenly parted. The Pentecost mass had just ended, and a parade of the simpecaos, the banners carried by the different religious groups, had begun.

The knots of people ebbed and moved as the 110 hermandades, yes the same kind from Holy Week, from around Spain presented their faithful before the church and moved around the village’s dusty streets. From simple to elegant, each carry a symbol of the Virgen del Rocío. The pilgrimage dates back to the 17th Century, with the hermandad from Almonte, el Matriz, being the oldest. Following the banner come women in two straight lines on either side of the simpecao, carrying long silver staffs topped with images of their brotherhood’s virgen. Their necks were emblazoned with the same silhouette in the form of heavy pendants on the end of multi-colored rope cords.

The festival at the Aldea is characterized by religious devotion, of course, but there’s much more to it. As Cait and I reflected over our first action-packed hour, we listened to other bar-goers recount their tales. Once the hermandades arrive to El Rocío through the various routes from the East, West and South, they settle into houses that look like a giant corral or hotel around a central patio, with room for the carrozas and horses behind. Gines, Olivares, Villamanrique and Triana have enormous patios, and we peeked in to see the merriment between beers. People sing, dance and pray for up to one week during the pilgrimage and the celebration.

Feeling refreshed, we decided on visiting the Virgin herself. The temple is simple, white-washed, save the golden retablao and a few frescoes in the corners of the nave. Cola de batas, the boundy ruffles of the traje rociero, showed under confessional booths, and the romeros prayed to the Virgen Mother, who was kept safely behind a cast iron gate, called a reja. After praying the rosary that night at midnight, she would “jump over” the reja and be paraded around the village on the shoulders of revelers, called the salta a la reja. This is the culmination of the week’s events, and it signals the abandonment of the recinto and the camino back home.

Outside, we bought candles in the gift shop to take to the adjacent prayer chapel. There’s a life-sized statue of the Rocío that people press their candles to before lighting them and finding a place to prop them up. The whole chapel was cool, smoky and silent – a far cry from the music emanating from the casas outside.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the streets, popping into bars for a beer (and relief from the hot midday sun), visiting my students from Olivares and trying to keep the sand out of our shoes. We got on the bus six hours after we’d arrived, absolutely exhausted and still bigger feriantas than rocieras.

Have you been to El Rocío or done the peregrinación? What was your experience like, especially on the road towards the Aldea? For more pictures, be sure to check out my Facebook page and become a fan for up-to-date photos and posts about Spain and Seville.

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