O Nazareno

I was welcomed into the bay of O Pobra do Caraminal by a 21 gun salute. Not for me of course, just the Spaniards banging off rockets for another blessed fiesta! But this, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, turned out to be just the start of the novena; a kind of count-down. Just as well, for the following couple of days were windy and wet. 

I wasn't long finding out what was up, in the baker's shop when I went ashore for bread. There on the counter was a pile of glossy programs for the Nazareno festival, coming up at the weekend. By Thursday, when I went to Santiago to meet Fiona off her flight from England, there were just a few showers; a bit cloudy on Friday, for Saturday and Sunday, not a cloud in the sky, apart from the ones caused by all the rockets!  They are inclined to make me cringe, like most grumpy old yachtsmen from the North, who value our peace and quiet, but the program had me interested.

It was full of the usual glossy ads, with the program of events and a welcome from the Mayor and the Commission who organised it. What was rather fascinating was that this wasn't just got up to make money and have some craic, though there was plenty of all that in it; I learned from the program that this fiesta had been held for over five hundred years. At its heart was the procession in which the statue of Jesus arraigned before Pilate, the Nazarene, was carried around the town. 

The spirit of the thing was actually straight out of the Middle Ages; the sort of thing that the Puritans drove out of Merry England all those five hundred years ago, in the name of pure religion; and the same baleful blight went on to affect all the English-speaking world. Religion became a private affair, while its social dimension was appropriated by the modern states, where, deprived of its transcendent basis, it has gradually withered away. 

So what of this 'impure' religion? Here are these Galicians, having a fine hooley to help put the magnificent summer behind them, to reconcile themselves to their lovely gardens dying and to knuckle down to another academic year, to another year of graft and struggling to make a living; plenty of them don't seem to take the religion bit very seriously at all. Sinners of all kinds cause hardly a raised eye-brow! And yet there is a certain innocence about it all, even the break-dancing and what passes for rock music here. What's more, though the drink flows, there's no real drunkenness to be seen. Above all, that dire sense of futility which haunts social activities with no spiritual footing, no window on Heaven, really seems absent.

For the spiritual heart of this fiesta beats away. Fiona and I were feeling a bit weary, and the idea of trailing round the streets in the heat was not attractive, but we were soon born along by the energy of the crowd; it turned out to be enjoyable to follow the swaying statue to the beat of the music.

Between the vigil and Sunday, there were 18 masses in the church, all packed. Fiona and I were extremely lucky to get about the last two seats at the Bishop's mass; he had come from Santiago to follow the Nazarene, and called upon Him 'to bless us and to show us our way, as pilgrims on the road of life'. And when on the vigil we had joined the crowd outside the church, and the voice of the priest from the loudspeaker ensconced in the old stone belfy proclaimed 'this is my body', one really felt it referred to all those people, to all of us; we do after all comprise the body of Christ.

Not that anyone stops to notice who is 'true believer'; at least as far as I see the believers and the secularists seem to have found out how to live together round here, though God knows a lot of pain has gone into the process. Are those dreadful Civil War scars really healed? At any rate, when it comes to getting money out of a secular government, the trick apparently is to call this carry-on cultural heritage and of touristic interest. It certainly does the local economy a power of good.

Meanwhile, these folk do social in little ways that we don't seem to be able to manage in Ireland, rubbish collection being a prime example, and good public spaces, and a proper little bus station with a cafe in every little town and plenty of bus shelters where one can sit on a bench out of the rain. But what's much more, they really do actually enjoy doing things en masse! This fiesta was fun; even I thought so!

They also do place; they evidently like to refer to Jesus as o Nazareno; he is a particular man from a particular place, not some abstract mythic hero. And they do food and they do family! They have a fine respect for physical reality. The cultural challenge we all face is to reintegrate all this with the one quality in which one might perhaps allow that the protestant cultures excell; the sense of personal responsibility!

*****

Going ashore - and a line of rubbish skips on the slip!

Supplies at the ready    

Vigil Mass


Pipers lead the way,

and the procession's off

Every one of those puffs was a bang!

The Anna M and the fishing fleet are at peace.

 Let the fun begin!

Nicolas is always busy about the marina, and on Monday morning, the ship that has been waiting patiently in the bay comes in, but they'll knock another day out of it in the town, and the pipes are soon swirling again,

while we're waiting for that north wind to kick in!