A Long Weekend in Andalusia Pt. 1.

Last weekend was a Bank Holiday here in Spain, celebrating the 1978 Constitution on Dec. 6th and some Virgin Mary or other's on the 8th - although I prefer to think of it as marking the anniversary of John Lennnon's death.

Luckily for us, my Dark Lady had Friday 5th off and I don't work on Fridays, so we set off to Granada while the rest of Spain - well at least the few who still have a job - were working. We decided to avoid the motorway for the first part of the journey and so went through the Sierra de Cádiz, stopping off for a coffee at Algodonales in El Cortijo a roadside restaurant/café/hotel with a charming exterior and interior. Here's a photo.

The Romantic Spain that many look for, but few find.

WHY BOB GELDOF AND HIS MATEYS WON'T BE SHAMING ME INTO PARTING WITH MY HARD-EARNED PENNIES.

Oh how it warmed the cockles of my heart to see Sir Bob Geldof and his superannuated millionaire mateys bestir themselves once again for the poor benighted Africans! 

Oh how (bowel-) moving to see the aristocracy of rock gather together in a spirit of brotherhood towards their fellow man and revive a conscience-stirring anthem of giving!

Oh how warm and fuzzy I felt inside seeing all of these rich people sacrifice their time and talents to help those less fortunate!

Oh how wonderful it must feel to swap anecdotes and tax dodges in a glow of camaraderie while quaffing champers and scoffing caviare butties (tax-deductible, no doubt).

Oh how guilty I felt as I fingered the change in my pocket, realising that I was going to have to spend it on diesel to get to work instead of buying this hymn to universal brotherhood.

Oh how grateful I felt to Bobby and his mates as they made me realise how selfish and uncaring I was towards my neighbour. 

Oh how unworthy I felt as cynically I wondered if this was nothing more that a ruse to revive various flagging careers.

Oh how much self-loathing and hatred I felt as I mused upon the fact that U2 gave away their latest album to iPhone owners (not exactly the most destitute of people) instead of putting it on sale at a greatly reduced price, proceeds going to combating Ebola. Obviously I am a hateful sceptic unfit to share a bottle of Bollinger with the great and good who were setting me such a shining example of self-sacrifice. 

In sum, instead of trying to shame ordinary people with their mortgages, school and/or university fees to part with a few pennies, why don't these people donate the royalties of one of their hit songs or albums to the cause - although I dare say that in the case of Saint Bob such royalties would be rather (and deservedly) meagre these days? How easy it is to have a social conscience when you've got more money than you know what to do with, except employ armies of accountants and tax lawyers to keep as much of it as possible and scrabble for more by demonstrating how wonderful you are by donating our money to your pet causes. 

Pay your taxes, I say, and then both the people and their governments will be able to contribute more to such things as the Ebola crisis.

I don't deny anyone the right to accumulate a fortune and enjoy it as they see fit, but I do object to a bunch of millionaires taking money from my pocket in order to bolster their own images as concerned humanitarian crusaders.

El Vaporcito. Better a Viking Funeral than Being Left to Rot?

Not so long ago, I wrote an entry on the El Puerto de Santa María - Cádiz ferry service. Well this weekend, my Dark Lady and I repeated the experience.

This time I was able to take a closer photo of the ill-fated Vaporcito mentioned in the above entry. Here is a picture of the boat in its present state. Have you ever seen such a sad sight?

A(nother) Modest Proposal

This week my colleagues and I have been conducting B1 certification oral exams for our august educational establishment's degree students. Thanks to the EU's Pisa Hgher Education treaty (GB quite sensibly did not sign up to this particularly demented bit), European students need a B1 level in a foreign language in order to get their degree.

Now, as an English teacher, I must admit to serious misgivings over my power to deny a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, or whatever, to a truly academically gifted student because s/he cannot give me grammatically correct advice on how to stop my imaginary daughter from spending all of her money on shoes, how I can lose weight, or remove a spider from my bath, however welcome that advice may be.

I also find it worrying that there is a growing number of unemployed 40+ year-old students with families etc. who are back at uni. trying to get a degree in order to have the slimmest of slim chances of finding employment. It's also rumoured that there are unicorns in the local park - they should try hunting them instead. It's depressing enough to see all the young ones with hopes of a bright future when the only brightness thay will get to experience is that of the TV as they kill zombies on the Play Station because IN SPAIN THERE ARE NO JOBS - unless you have friends in the right places.

A possible - but just as brutal - solution might be an adaptation of Swift's Modest Proposal. Swift ironically suggested that as the 18th-century Catholic Irish were such prolific breeders and so grindingly poor, they should breed babies for the tables of the English nobility and mercantile classes. Spare the babies, I say! What Spain needs is another Civil War. It might plunge the country into poverty, starvation and mass murder, but it would sure as hell reduce unemployment. Indeed, it would provide huge opportunities for the unemployed young men and women as soldiers, doctors, nurses, black marketeers, NGO leeches &c. &c. &c. And, of course, post-war there would be a lot of reconstruction and fewer workers.

The above is obviously an ironic comment on the state of the country, yet all of the ingredients for a civil war are there - a disgruntled populace, tired of the corruption, and unemployment that devastates the country while highly gruntled politicians, bankers and union executives live off the fat of the land, tax the people and bleed the country white. And now we are witnessing the rise of Podemos (aka Pokemon), a demogogical political party for the disaffected - i.e. almost the whole Spanish populace - which seems to have borrowed from Castro, Chaves, Morales, &c. 

The cafés and bars in Plaza del Cabildo, the main square in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, are witness to a constant procession of beggars, asking clients for food, a coffee or money. Some are addicts. Most are unemployed people whose benefit has run out and who have no other means of support. And all credit to the good people of Sanlúcar de Barrameda; they are very charitable and willing to help when they can. Who knows? It might be them next.

Strolling through Seville

Seville is not exactly my favourite city, but I work for one of the august higher educational establishments there, so I do have to go to the place  regularly to impart classes. As I live in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, which is at the mouth of the river Guadalquivir - the same river that runs through Seville - this involves a two-hour commute by coach or, indeed a two-hour drive by car. if you're interested, you can read previous posts about Sanlúcar here, here, here or here.

An aside: "How", you might well ask, "does the car journey last as long as the bus journey, especially as you don't stop in the five major towns en route?" And indeed: "Isn't it cheaper and more environmentally friendly to use public transport?". And I would answer "The car journey is just as long because as I don't have to get up so early, I arrive in Seville in time to get caught up in two separate traffic jams, one on either side of the city". And in answer to the second I would reply that "As my classes start first thing in the morning, no bus arrives in Seville early enough for me to get to my first class on time, thus necessitating an overnight stay in the city the night before. This makes the bus journey more expensive than going by car so, unfortunately, the environment loses out on that one. Furthermore, try sitting on the bus next to someone with halitosis who has in all probability just had toast with olive oil and garlic for breakfast. That will dampen your enthusiasm - even if the bus journey does give you four hours more reading time". I once made the journey on a bus that stank of rotten teeth - wherever I tried sitting. This, incidentally, is not an indictment of the hygiene habits - or lack thereof - of the great Spanish public. People in Spain tend to be scrupulously clean; more so than in most European countries, especially, entre nous, the one sandwiched between Spain and England. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to forget, here as elsewhere, that mouths can be just as noisesome as armpits - or even worse. 

A useless piece of information: Listerine was originally a badly-selling floor cleaning product, but a clever marketing chappie discovered halitosis and convinced the manufacturer to rebottle it as a mouthwash. I suppose that the composition has changed since then. This was a cynical move by anyone's standards, but the marketer deserves a Nobel prize for services to humanity, though there's still a long way to go before we are no longer assaulted by the halitosis of our fellows. 

Digressions over, here are the photos. Let's start in Sanlúcar as I prepare to leave:

Sanlúcar's Calzada de la Duquesa with Doñana across the
 river in the extreme background.

Quinto Centenario Bridge. The winning design was,
strange to relate, submitted by the brother of
the then Minister for Foreign Affairs.
  Image courtesy of Panoramio

The first traffic jam I run into is on the access roads to the Quinto Centenario bridge. Built for Seville's Expo '92 - more of which later - it was rumoured to have been designed with eight lanes. Apparently, three of these lanes disappeared unaccountably along with part of the budget to build it, so it was built with five lanes. All rather silly considering that three lanes of traffic in each direction converge there. This problem is further compounded on the southern side of the bridge as there are a further two filter lanes full of cars jostling to get onto the access.Furthermore,the lanes on the bridge itself are illegal as they contravene the minimum width required by Spanish law.




Having parked my car, I walk past the Andalusian Regional Parliament which used to be a hospital, called Hospital de la Cinco Llagas - literally the hospital of the five running sores - a reference to Christ's wounds. Now, however, there's only one enormous running

Hospital de las Cinco Llagas. Suppurating with corruption.

sore there - the blatant corruption and money-grabbing antics of the politicians as they root around in the trough. To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, there's a corruption case grinding through the courts at the moment involving the alleged defalcation of over €1bn through various clever wheezes involving politicians of the ruling (Socialist) regime and high officials of trades unions, as well as quite a few of their family members. If in power, the Right would be just as bad.

A view downriver to the Torre Pelli skyscraper

I then cross the river, going over Santiago Calatrava's spectacular Alamillo Bridge to what used to be the Expo '92 International Exhibition which celebrated the fifth centenary of the Discovery of the Americas - yet another opportunity for the politicians, their families and friends to grab money from the State with the complicity of the government of the time. To be scrupulously fair, however,it must be said that lorryloads of the marble that entered the Expo site for use there found its way into hundreds of bathrooms and kitchens in the city of Seville. Everyone involved had their share of the cake, not just the politicoes. I think I'm not mistaken in stating that the final Expo audits, like the EU's annual budgets, have yet be signed off by the corresponding Courts of Auditors.

In its day, the bridge caused a furore among the more narrow-minded Sevilian traditionalists because the height if its arm meant that it, not the cathedral belltower, was the first thing seen by people arriving in Seville from the North. Now they moan about the Torre Pelli which I mentioned in a previous post. 

Two views of the bridge: one from the bridge deck looking towards the backwards-leaning mast and the other taken from behind the mast itself. there is a widespread view among structural engineers that the roadway is self-supporting and that the mast and stays are there for show only. Still, it is rather pretty. Originally there were going to be two such bridges spanning two separate arms of the Guadalquivir, but the money ran out - or found its way into politicans' pockets faster than it could be spent on the two bridges - so the second bridge, connected to the Alamillo by a breathtaking causeway (see the photo below) is a more humdrum box bridge

The causeway. in the distance you can see a white mast leaning away
from the structure. There is one on either side, recalling the mast of
the Alamillo bridge itself.

Municipal allotments - but how are they allotted?

Once over the bridge, my stroll takes me past some allotments among the orange groves that the Expo left untouched. Apparently, to get one you need to have friends in certain places.

And finally it's on towards one of the two centres where I give my classes before getting into my car and escaping from Seville and its monuments to institutionalised corruption.

When I started to write this entry, I was just going to write a brief, bland commentary on the photos, but as I started, I realised that at almost every turn I could make a comment on corruption - a sorry state of affairs indeed. 

From El Puerto de Santa María to Cádiz and A Bit of French for Good Measure

El Puerto de Santa María, bathed by the Guadalete, is another Sherry town, approximately 5 miles across the bay of Cádiz from the eponymous city. Today El Puerto, like Jerez and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, is full of mouldering wineries waiting for the next property boom to be turned into des. res. flats for upper-class tourists and bijou shops idem. 

It is also famous for two 20th-century poets, Rafael Alberti[1] and Jose Luis Tejada. As well as a poet, Alberti was quite a gifted painter, but unfortunately his oratory left quite a lot to be desired – let’s just say that when reading his own oeuvre he sounded like Leonard Cohen babbling through a particularly monotonous dirge - but without the ebullient Canadian’s burning passion and joie de vivre.

El Vaporcito in happier days, chuntering up the
Guadalete. Courtesy of photaki.com.

Anyhow, let’s cut to the chase. El Puerto has a regular ferry service to Cádiz, for more information click here. For a satellite image of the Bay of Cádiz, click here. This weekend, my Dark Lady who knows that I’m addicted to boat rides (there is nothing to beat a bracing ferry ride across the Mersey on a blustery winter’s day), treated me to a ferry ride to Cádiz. It was almost a decade since we had last made the journey on the Vaporcito, or Little Steamer, that used to ply the route.

And thereby hangs a rather sad and sorry tale. Launched in 1955, the wooden-hulled

El Vaporcito, afer its encounter with
a breakwater. Courtesy of El Mundo.es

 Vaporcito merrily transported passengers across the bay until August 2011 when it hit a breakwater, struggled pluckily into the port of Cádiz and sank – fortunately without loss of life or injury. A few days later it was raised and taken to a shipyard for repairs. The shipyard promptly went belly-up and the boat was seized by the yard’s creditors. Since then several attempts have been made to rebuild it, but Byzantine court cases among shareholders, the Regional Government and anyone else who cares to join in has left the Vaporcito literally high, if not completely dry.

El vaporcito, awaiting the decision of the courts.
Courtesy of Vanesa de la Cruz.

So today we went on one of the four catamarans that cross the bay (€5.30 return). All of them are modern, fibreglass vessels and are not of any real aesthetic interest. The interest lies in the crossing, not the medium. We wanted to do a Kate Winslet à la Titanic, but unfortunately the prow is permanently roped off.

Once out of the Guadalete, we got a magnificent view of the new cable-stayed bridge, La Pepa,  so called after the 1812 Spanish Constitution signed in  in Cádiz on March 19th, Saint Joseph’s day, Pepa being

View of La Pepa. Courtesy of Vanesa de la Cruz.

the nickname for Josephine. In its time, La Pepa was the most progressive constitution in Europe. It even, gulp, gave women the vote! 

Cádiz was the only provincial capital not to fall into the hands of the French during the Peninsular War. As such, it became the temporary capital city of Spain. Under siege from the French on the landward side, the jolly Jack Tars of the Royal Navy kept maritime communications open. This is the historical backdrop to winner of the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger, Arturo Pérez Reverte's best-selling and highly absorbing thriller El Asedio, in English The Siege, 

When finished, La Pepa will be the second bridge connecting the isthmus of Cádiz to the mainland. Immediately in front of us we could see the Muelle Pesquero de Cádiz basin which gives onto the lively Plaza San Juan de Dios presided over by Cádiz Town Hall.

This basin is also the port of call for cruise liners, as mentioned in a previous post and today we were lucky enough to see a sailing cruise ship, the Sea Cloud II from Valetta.

Sea Cloud II from Plaza San Juan de Dios

After coffee in the plaza and a walk around the city we wended our way back to the dock to get the boat back to El Puerto and thence home to Sanlúcar by car. Today, the views across the bay had been stunning – we could even see inland across the bay, past Rota, home to the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet, as far as the town of Trebujena[2], some 24 miles distant, and the wind turbines outside Sanlúcar. All in all, it was a most enjoyable day in the best of company. We hope to repeat the experience this winter when the crossing will be rougher. What could be more invigorating? 

---

[1] Alberti was an intimate friend of Dalí, Luis Buñuel and Lorca. This latter (when not dressing up as a nun and riding around the Barcelona trams with his aforementioned chums) would probably have faded into obscure mediocrity had he not been murdered in a rather savage manner by the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, thus becoming  a martyr for left-wing trendies and a reliable cash cow for certain tousle-headed Irish academics. 

BTW, when making meatballs, Lorca's family cook would press the patties of meat in her armpits to give them that extra little je ne sais quoi.

[2] Trebujena's rice paddies were made famous in Spielberg’s film Empire of the Sun. What the viewer sees as a sunrise was, in fact, a sunset played backwards. It has to be said, though, that the town definitely looks better when there’s a good 24 miles' distance between it and yourself.

On Sanlúcar de Barrameda

As I have mentioned in previous posts, Sanlúcar  de Barrameda is a relatively undiscovered jewel among the smaller coastal Andalusian cities – and its catchphrase “Calidad de vida”, or “Quality of Life” is one of the truest I have ever come across. For further general information click on this wikipedia link.

A panoramic shot of the beach.

Sanlúcar is famous for its Manzanilla sherry – it’s 10 miles from 

A Chinese restaurant. Note 
the round window .This was to
regulate thetemperature in 
the wineries and is common to
all the"Cathedrals of Wine"in
the Jerez DO.

the city of Jerez and is one of the vertices of the Sherry 
Triangle.
For the past few decades, Sherry consumption worldwide 
has been in decline and the large number of abandoned 
wineries to be seen throughout the Denomination of Origin
are its silently eloquent witnesses. Some become 

restaurants and shops as this image attests, others are 
bulldozed to become blocks of flats.

Luckily for Sanlúcar, the city is also famous for its beaches, 

fresh fish, horticulture[1] and, therefore, cuisine.
Indeed, people come from other cities in Andalusia to enjoy 
dining in the local restaurants which range
 from the relatively expensive, but still good value, 
such as El Espejo to the down-to-earth family establishments that serve good, honest, 
fare; Casa Balbino, for example.

Inside the municipal food market.

A firm favourite here – indeed, in all 

of the province of Cádiz’ coastal towns are the famous tortillitas de camarones and tortillitas de bacalao. These are shrimp or cod fritters and are quite simple to make – see the rough recipe below.

My own effort. I used frozen pollock,

employing the meltwater in the batter
mix - a neat (Hairy Bikers) trick 
when battering fish. To accompany, 
fried green peppers.

Make a batter with the consistency of 

double cream, add finely-chopped 

sweet onion and parsley along with

 shrimps or finely-minced, salted cod 

that has been soaked overnight. 

Ladle the mixture one fritter at a time 

into very hot oil – not olive oil as it 

begins to smoke at a relatively low 

temperature. Fry until crispy and lacy. 

Enjoy with a chilled, dry, white wine. 

Obviously the wine of choice should be 

Manzanilla. 

Calidad de vida on a plate and on your palate!

---

[1] The Patata de Sanlúcar for example, is grown on sandy soil (bajo navazo) relatively near to the beaches and is a firm favourite of gourmets throughout Spain – it can even be ordered online for next day delivery anywhere in the country!

Come on, My Son - or A Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted

Now this one's going to give away my age...

When I was an infant, my maternal grandfather would often take me out for a cup of hot chocolate to the Top Ten Café near where we lived. How I enjoyed those moments with Granddad in the café! Sometimes I was even allowed to go into the, gasp, back room with him.

The back room was a pretty stark affair, wooden floors, hard seats and tables, a fat ginger tom asleep by the gas fire, enough (Player's Navy strength & Woodbines) ciggy smoke to cure a boatload of kippers, a blackboard(???) and a wall-mounted loudspeaker that chanted exotic names and numbers. Strange to say that all of this chanting seemed to make some of the men there ecstatic and plunge others into the deepest depths of small-bits-of-paper-ripping despondency. 

With the passage of time - decades - I realised that I had spent part of my infancy in an illegal gambling den; licensed betting shops were still a few years away. These days, I suppose that this (coupled with a tot of rum or whisky in my morning tea, administered by my Granddad who also taught me Welsh and how to sup tea from the saucer) would place me firmly on the risk list of even the most cynically disillusioned of social workers.

Looking back, I don't think I was traumatised by it all. In fact, I would argue that in hindsight it was an interesting experience. I, for one, do not gamble. I don't have a knee-jerk reaction of revulsion towards it, nor do I condemn it from any feeling of outrage. I merely pity those who are ingenuous enough to believe that they are going to make, instead of lose, money. More than that, I pity their families who are the real victims of the bookies, online casinos etc. who prey on such weak-minded folk. 

People on both sides of my family lost fortunes on the gee-gees and the financial markets, but heigh ho, that's all water under the bridge.

So finally to the photo I want to publish.

A magnificently dramatic shot of a horse race, 

Sanlúcar de Barrameda. August 2014 Courtesy:

Maricielo Gil Arranda

Every Spring and Summer in Sanlúcar de Barrameda there are cycles of horse races on the beach in the evening. These are the oldest horse races in Spain and amongst the oldest in Europe.

Another powerfully dramatic spectacle. A
supernova sunset at the beach after the last
race of the day (this one's mine).

Thousands of people gather on the beach to watch. Indeed enthusiasts come from all over Europe to enjoy the spectacle. And a mighty impressive sight it is too. Let's forget the money side of it all and concentrate on the aesthetics: the sun is setting and there is a certain tension in the air among everyone - whether they have been foolish enough to have a flutter or not. The horses are off and a murmur runs through the crowd, turning into a roar as the horses approach. Then with the an earthquake of hooves and a deafening rumble from crowd, the horses dash past. It's all over in a matter of seconds, but in those scarce couple of seconds you have witnessed a powerfully dramatic spectacle. 

Summer Solstice in El Acebrón

El Palacio de El Acebrón is a neo-Palladian Palace built in the 1960s in the middle of Doñana Natural Park, already mentioned en passant in a previous post, Strangers on the Shore.

Sunset at El Acebrón with its chapel on our right. Note that for all its
pretence of grandeur, it rather lacks depth. It's really nothing more than a
glorified shed - the only thing missiing was the dried bag of cement to sit on
while supping your tea.

Today, the palace is an interpretation centre for the National Park and is quite a surprising sight - definitely not typically Spanish. Seeing a building that would not be amiss on a Pink Panther film set certainly  takes you aback.

The Palace's history is rather strange: it was built by a wealthy landownwer, Luis Espinosa Fondevilla. Luis was a very charitable man. This and his obsession with the palace finally ruined him as he poured all of his fortune into helping others and the rather ill-conceived construction of El Acebrón. While the ground floor boasts brilliant marble floors, a hugely ornate fireplace and a red marble staircase, the first floor was a poor, unfinished space, the roof made of sheets of corrugated asbestos.

In fact, the palace was never really finished and Luis died in November 1975, the same month and year as Franco's demise. Even before then his precarious financial situation had forced him to sell up to a local paper mill, who took over the stands of eucalytpus that had been his main source of income. He was allowed to stay on and live out his final years in his folly. The Palace was abandonded until 1982 when it was bought by the State and refurbished - including the installation of a proper flat roof.

According the the building's caretaker and researcher, the building boasts over 360 mystic and religious symbols, starting with the scroll on the pediment with the letters LEF - the initials of both the owner and of the French Revolution's motto: Liberté Egalité, Fraternité, which are also Masonic watchwords. I must add, however, that I do have certain problems with symbolism. Just like literature and the myriad allusions to be found therein, I think that a lot of such insertions are just coincidence and/or put there because they are pretty or just barefaced flourishes to make a work more "interesting", more "profound".

What the Butler Saw? Men in pinnies holding
hands. 

Luis was rumoured to be gay, as members of the household staff were not unused to elcoming quite large groups of exclusively male visitors who held strange rituals in the chapel. Indeed, rumour among people who remember that time has it that these mysterious men were even seen wearing aprons and holding hands - something not unknown in any Masonic Lodge. There is, however, no documentary evidence to support this - hardly surprising given the fact that we are talking about events in Francoist Spain.

Sunset in the the formerly grand 

gardens.

So to the present. On June 21st the Palace was the scene of Regular Masonic Lodge Itálica 107's Summer Solstice celebration.  First, the Summer Solstice ceremony was held in the chapel, now used as a space for audiovisual presentations on Doñana. After the Solemn Ritual, we all enjoyed a talk on astronomy, including a session of stargazing on the flat roof, before going down to a buffet dinner in the dining room.

Looking towards a dingly dell.

All in all, it was not a very enjoyable night. This next part is a rewrite following my decision to leave the Lodge: Well OK, maybe it wasn't.  Everybody split off into little cliques - quite amusing really to see exclusive groups inside a rather exclusive organisation based on values brotherhood and equality. I think that this night was when I started to reconsider my commitment to Freemasonry - at least to this particular self-congratulatory Lodge that seems to be run for the greater glory of a select few. For example, we chose to park in the designated car park and not outside the house itself. At the end of the night,  it would have been, in my eyes at least,  logical if my so called "Brethren" had offered us a lift to the car park 500 metres down a sandy track instead of driving by seemingly blind to the fact that they were choking us with dust and that perhaps we would have said yes to such an offer. 

It is the first time that I can claim to have dined in a palace- one that on reflection seems to be a metaphor for Italica 107 - seemingly quite magnificent and welcoming, yet one that, beneath the stucco and atrezzo is nothing more than an overblown, if somewhat shallow shed.    For more pictures of this architectural folly, go to this blog. 

And of course, the whole event had nothing in common with Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut! 

No goats or chickens were sacrificed in the making of this entry - although a lot of  crustaceans were indeed boiled alive previous to the proceedings. And jolly tasty prawns they were too! it's a pity that the company didn't live up to the food.

Long Live The White Pigeon!!!

Last weekend (June 21st - 22nd) was the Summer Solstice and we were due to attend a celebration in the Palacio del Acebrón, Doñana (see above). As this is about 200km by road from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, we decided to overnight in the nearby village of El Rocío.

  Ascot comes to El Rocío: the 
  White Pigeon is seen here 
  sporting a rather fetching hat, 

  even though the brim is somewhat
  smaller than the regulatory 4 
  inches minimum demanded of 
  those ladies who want to sashay
  around the Royal Enclosure. Does
  this Lady tell her nags to "move
  yer bleedin'arse!!!"? I wonder. 

Now, this is a really weird place, a virtual ghost town built on sand dunes with no metalled roads. So what is it all about, then? The village of El Rocío has sprung up around a hermitage that is home to the statue of Nuestra Señora del Rocío, Our - or better, Their - Lady of the Dew, aka  La Blanca Paloma, or the White Pigeon; there is no word in Spanish for dove. Many of us of a certain age might remember the disgraced Jonathan King's version of Una Paloma Blanca, although I much prefer the Wurzels' parody.  In Christian symbology, the dove represents the Holy Spirit, which makes this statue's soubriquet quite unique in Christian idolatry. 

Legend had it that some local peasants found a statue of the simpering White Pigeon in the

At home with the White Pigeon. Note the

austere Christian simplicity of the 

knick-knacks.

marshes. This "miracle" was happening all around Spain at the time as wily priests tried to keep their flocks happy by giving them their own Our Lady of... statue - a bit like when football clubs get the occasional Brazilian player (the players are occasional; their performance, at best, rather erratic) to keep up their fans' interest. But I digress. As they started to lug the statue back to Almonte, their local town, miraculously it  got progressively heavier until they had to abandon it and go home for the night. Is it any surprise that an unwieldy lump of wood gets heavier as you carry it through marshland - especially after a hard day's work? When they returned the following day, Lo! The White Pigeon was back in its original place! This to-ing and fro-ing was kept up for a few days until the priest, probably mighty tired of trundling the statue back to where he had hidden it in the first place night after night in his handcart, decreed that the White Pigeon wanted to stay where it was and that a hermitage had to be built on that very site - probably his "nephew" owned the plot. And thus it was.  

One of the 23 horses to die during the 2013 party. Photo courtesy of
ecorepublicano.es 

The El Rocío pilgrimage is now one of the world's largest and there are many confraternities dedicated to the White Pigeon throughout Spain. Each year roughly one million "pilgrims" make their way to the village on foot, horseback, air-conditioned luxury SUV etc., taking one of three recognised routes. The torments and constant sacrifices of this week-long journey are leavened by nightly parties - true Bacchanalia involving sex, drugs, croquette-sized mosquitoes and migraine-inducing Flamenco. Luckily for the participants, the sins of the journey are washed clean by the mass on Sunday.

In the village, there is plenty of space for the rich and ostentatious to prance their horses around. Many of these horses die of exhaustion and are left to bloat and rot in the streets. A sacrifice to the mother of the god of love.

But for the 4x4s, Clint Eastwood

wouldn't look out of place in 

this picture

Anyhow, we reserved a room in a pension for €46. During the pilgrimage it costs €500! After we had unpacked we went for a trudge through the sandy streets where we saw hundreds, literally hundreds, of houses that lie unoccupied more than 300 days of the year. We also saw the cofraternities' houses - if such a term can be used for these enormous buildings, some of which occupy a whole block.

One of the many cofrat houses.

As we can see from the various pictures, this village is a wonderful example of the how Christianity has become corrupt - at least as far as the Roman sect goes. Where now humility, lack of ostentation, wallet-busting charity? The cofraternities often boast of their charitable works. If they were truly charitable, and if the private householders were truly Christian and worthy of the status of pilgrim, they would put their property to better use - summer residences for underprivileged children for example? Better still, they could sell off these highly desirable holiday residences and open soup kitchens for the needy poor of their own cities. They could even - Lord preserve us! - offer up their greatest sacrifice; forgoing their pilgrimage and employing the money saved and the time gained to help the poorer citizens that surround them in their daily lives.

A view along the street to two more cofrat houses.

Hippy squatters take note: you have a whole village to 

occupy and do your "alternative" stuff in while leeching
off the capitalist society that you so noisily reject.

Such hypocrisy. It makes my blood boil!