EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALApril 2, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
Madruga: Good Friday
Madruga is the Spanish word for "getting an early
start". In the early hours of Good Friday the fever pitches.
At midnight the procession of Jesus de Gran Poder leaves the
Basilica and an hour later the paso passes the Conservatory. The 2300 member
procession makes up 3 kilometres of penitents. There is not even a band—the nazarenos
count on the strength of their numbers and the somber, collective shuffling of the their
feet to evoke pathos and render the tears and silence of the onlookers. Christ is black,
sinewy and larger than life, wearing a heavy, violet robe and a golden rope around his
waist. The cross he carries is as long as the float: the width of a costalero,
times ten. Behind his paso, shuffling between the hooded nazarenos is a
cluster followers. The worshippers move like an undulating sea of elderly women in
ill-fitting slippers. Plastic bonnets and lace obscure their faces. The Virgin’s paso,
which always follows at the end of a procession, won’t pass for another hour.
Penitence is paid in long, silent stops every fifty metres.
The Puente de Isabel II crosses the Guadalquivir from the Triana
District. From here the Capilla (Chapel) de los Marineros makes its way in
the full moonlight. The devout have camped on the bridge and along the Avenue of the
Catholic Kings. Besides the processions, and the hundreds of thousands of additional
crowds roaming the streets, tonight is like any other Thursday night in Seville. The young
people collect at the farthest edges of the procession crowds, along the banks of the
river. They take in the activity and hear the music, but for the most part focus on their
drinking and subsequent vomiting, bottle throwing and moto two-stroke-revving.
Procession chasing in Seville is not a skilled craft. One can easily
stumble upon a parade of pointed hoods at the end of an alley, or follow the weeping
trumpet. With the length of the processions, and the number of them (there are six in the
middle of tonight), it is like walking through a maze with a connected, snaking series of
points. One may leave a paso at an intersection and after weaving through a dozen
or so streets, meet up with another section of the bizarre serpent. At the end of a
narrow, empty alley, we come upon the Gran Poder nazarenos, returning from
the Cathedral on a roundabout route.
We’re far from home, at the edge of the old city. Finding a direct
route to bed is impossible. At each alley’s mouth is a cork of several thousand
believers. We push gently through a body of thousands and between penitents. We are
streamlined to the edge of the crowd, where the paso of the Esperanza de Triana’s
Virgin will pass in a few moments. Those around us have been waiting for several hours in
this spot, but we simply can’t move into the crowd. With the imminent paso,
the mob steps back into density, impassible. A group of costaleros appears between
the proceeding nazarenos. Rich whispers, "I wonder if the carriers are going
to do a change-over".
The gilded paso of the Esperanza Virgin approaches. The tearful
image, carved by Antonio Castillo Lastrucci in 1929 stands in a green velvet robe with her
hands outstretched, holding a lace handkerchief. Her eyes are large and brown, turned down
at the temples and shadowed by long, furrowed eyebrows. Her halo is a variation of all the
others—gold, ornate, and pointing skyward. She stops before us. A nazareno
dressed in a military uniform, protecting, instructs the onlookers to make room. On
a balcony above us a man leans over the railing and begins a saeta, a
"shaft" or arrow of song directed at the Virgin. He sings unaccompanied,
guttural and wailing like the flamenco singers in the smoky bars. He waves his hands and
holds the notes in long breaths, breaking up and sputtering out again painfully. The crowd
faces him like solar panels. At our knees, the velvet curtain at the bottom of the float
is lifted and fifty costaleros slide out from under a supporting steel bar. They
come to a standing position in front of us, dazed and unsteady. Their bodies are hot and
wet, pressing. They are red faces and headdresses of canvas, rolled at the neck where the paso
is supported. On a flap of canvas under the neckroll sobs Mary in a silk-screened
portrait.
The replacements slide into position quickly, and all the while the man
of the balcony pours out his devotion, ornate and torturous, onto the canopied statue. The
foreman walks along the edge of the paso and checks the numbers, ensuring the
positions of the carriers. Then he taps the float and the costaleros unanimously
jump, and the drummers initiate a heartbeat. The singer reaches his climax. The moon
illuminates his outstretched hands, the faces of the listeners, the drumskins and the
canvas shoes peeking out from under the velvet curtain. The Virgin, crying wooden tears,
is lit by a terraced candle fortress. "Guapo! (Handsome!) Guapo!",
and with the crowd, "GUAPO!" The drummers drum rouse, and the trumpets
join in, the costaleros step forward, lilting and rocking, and the Virgin
"walks" into the darkness of the alley.
