“You cannot wear that flamenco dress on a pilgrimage to El Rocío, Bonito,” Maria Cárdenas, our Airbnb host, laughed. “You will die in the warmth.”
She squeezed the thick red fabric between her thumb and held it as much as my face like a specimen. “You’ll see? Such heavy, tight dresses are made for festivals within the bullring in Seville,” she explained.
The El Rocío pilgrimage is a high-octane religious spectacle – an annual multi-day fiesta held in Andalusia, Spain’s southernmost region – flamenco costumes, caravans and a non secular fervor that appears to be growing stronger despite less and fewer influence of the Catholic Church.
Participants can spend months preparing: planning menus, renting tractors, organizing caravans. It also requires the number of a dress that may allow the wearer to alleviate himself behind a bush, while exuding the elegance of Goya. Duchess of Alba.
After studying for a 12 months in Seville in 2012, Kevin, my collaborator, had long dreamed of returning to document the El Rocío pilgrimage, which was canceled for 2 consecutive years on account of the pandemic. My relationship with Spain is more moderen: I moved to Mallorca last 12 months after deciding that life was too short to not survive a Mediterranean island. Kevin and I usually work on travel assignments together, and when he told me about El Rocío, I immediately said yes, because the most effective solution to experience a recent country is to have a good time together.
Although we documented the pilgrimage in 2022 (this 12 months it is going to happen at the tip of May), we also participated within the celebrations. Andalusia – famous for its flamenco dancing, cowboy culture and pilgrimage – has a definite and seductive identity that the people of southern Spain are rightly pleased with.
The pilgrimage of El Rocío is maybe essentially the most powerful visual representation of Andalusian culture, and it is that this, in addition to religious zeal, that drives a whole bunch of 1000’s of pilgrims to the sanctuary of Our Lady within the village of El Rocío. Some travel on foot, others in ornate caravans. Many ride horses: stiff and smartly dressed riders in wide-brimmed hats, high-waisted paseo trousers, and cropped guayabera jackets.
On the primary day, Kevin and I hiked through the Doñana National Park, some 40 minutes south of downtown Seville, searching for the pilgrims who were assured they’d be there. Finally we heard the faint tinkle of cow bells, the clatter of horses’ hooves, the creaking of caravan wheels, the sounds of flamenco guitars, voices singing in unison. Within minutes, the dusty road was a festival. Caravans passed by. Pilgrims shoved bottles of Cruzcampo beer and slices of smoked Iberico ham into our hands. The singing reached a crescendo.
In Spain, Catholicism is taken seriously. But beer, ham and cheese too – even at 10am
Many Andalusian cities, towns and villages have created their very own pilgrimages – referred to as romerías, so named because pilgrims traditionally walked to Rome – dedicated to their particular patron saints. But the four-day walk to El Rocío has achieved cult status.
According to legend, a statue of the Virgin Mary was discovered in a tree trunk many a whole bunch of years ago, within the marshes of the Guadalquivir River. For several centuries, devotion to this shrine was confined to the encircling towns of Almonte and Villamanrique de la Condesa. However, in the 20th century, as a part of the celebration of Pentecost, hermandads (brotherhoods) of pilgrims took as much as 4 days to achieve these areas – from around Seville and Huelva, and at last beyond Andalusia, from Madrid, Barcelona and the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. At night, the hermandades camped within the woods, dined together at long tables, and danced flamenco across the fires until the truth of the 15-mile hike the subsequent day couldn’t be ignored.
Kevin and I are obsessive about international festivals. His impulse is to take portraits, mine is to listen and learn. But wherever we go, Kevin and I are likely to give attention to faces.
In El Rocío, no face was closed to outsiders. We were invited to caravans; told to take a seat down and eat goulash and sliced watermelon; drawn to flamenco dances; and we were instructed to take a siesta on the grass after lunch, otherwise “we might never live to see Sunday,” one attendee told us. No one we met was reluctant to be interviewed or photographed. Everyone appeared to accept that El Rocío was a spectacle. Our surprise and curiosity were taken as an expression of respect.
We joined caravans within the muddy waters of Quema, a ford on the Guadiamar River, a tributary of the Guadalquivir. In the village of Villamanrique de la Condesa, every restaurant and bar was stuffed with spectators. (El Rocío is televised like a sporting event throughout Spain.)
On Friday night, the primary of the hermandads arrived in El Rocío, a small town that jogged my memory of Western film sets I had seen in California and Arizona. His character is entirely shaped by pilgrimage; the more famous Hermandos – like Huelva, with its 10,000 pilgrims – have huge boarding houses on the outskirts of the town, with convent-like rooms and vast communal dining and dancing areas. Smaller hermandads are simply searching for short-term rentals. Even with our novice Spanish we were ushered into the whitewashed house and treated to beer, bits of manchego cheese and slices of cured ham. It struck me that almost all Spanish culinary products are essentially pilgrim food: controlled decay has was a delicacy.
In El Rocío we found religious fervor within the streets, within the Churro huts, within the hermandades themselves. But there was also enthusiasm for the sake of enthusiasm. I’m the Irish daughter of a Presbyterian minister, brought up on unpretentious religious ceremonies; tea and scone are as decadent as Presbyterian festivities. In El Rocío I used to be intoxicated by the pageantry and rituals and the concept pilgrimage can and also needs to be a source of revelry.
Friday night was Saturday morning, and Kevin and I chatted with two young friends from Madrid, each of us in our thirties. They told us that young people desired to get away from religious traditions. But El Rocío offers them an escape, they said, from the stresses of recent life.
“I like El Rocío since it’s the one time of the 12 months my whole family gets together – no excuses,” said Carmen Mora, a 32-year-old worker at a tourism technology start-up. “It’s healthy to ignore city life for per week – my city clothes, technology, my job, pressure.”
“It’s good that the spirit is immersed in tradition,” she added.
