Free-D

It’s a major challenge of course and those – especially from the younger generation – who are less controlled will break the silence. But in the main, the pasos are carried out in total with a mute respect. The funeral dirges, the bare feet, the intimidating anonymity of the hooded mask, and the sheer beautiful solemnity of the occasion, bear witness to the firmness of Christianity’s grip over the country. As with so many things here, the sheer heart-wrenching artistry of the act has become far greater than the sum of its parts, and as with bullfighting, if the aesthetic carries you through strongly enough, you can forget about the rather flimsy justification or pretext for its existence in the first place. 

If Gerald Berry is to be believed (and I have no reason to doubt him), a number of cults appeared in Rome in about 200 BC. The lover of Cybele was Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. “Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection… [Christians] used to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus on the same date; and pagans and Christians used to quarrel bitterly about which of their gods was the true prototype and which the imitation.” It’s extraordinary how blatantly the early Christians appropriated and manipulated reality and belief to their own ends, and how smoothly their economy with the truth spread effortlessly into so many cultures. Clearly the name Easter itself derives from the Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility (Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur etc.). Some of the details of the Passion were also derived from a need – cynical perhaps – for political expediency. Talk to poor old Pilate. Left in limbo to pay for his indecision, he really represents the early Christians’ need to placate the Roman hosts. The myth survived but the reality of the situation has conveniently been forgotten.

It’s a great relief that the Spanish have generally managed to resist the commercial hijacking of pagan Easter by chocolate manufacturers. And just as the more non-secular name Semana Santa is preferred over Teutonic fertility goddesses, so the dower processions seem to reflect a sober response to the festivities – as if everyone got it out of their system during Carnavales. Well, not quite… there may be no Easter Bunnies – thank God – but here in Salamanca there is the unique, rather more savoury and subtly saucy tradition of Lunes de Aguas, the first Monday after Easter: the population of Salamanca make an exodus over the Tormes for a mass picnic, eating their hornazos and cheerfully remember that this was the time when Padre Putas brought the prostitutes back into town after keeping them in exile during lent. Apparently the poor wenches were then forced to turn to begging to make up their lost earnings, hence the expression, “pides más que las putas en cuaresma”, so it comes as no surprise that their return was celebrated by the biggest botellón in history.