The religious commemoration of the Holy Week just began in Cadiz, Spain. People jammed the streets to celebrate it. Floats with statues depicting different passages of Jesus’ life and death paraded through downtown. Lines of penitents dressed in robes and pointed hats preceded the images. Women in dark clothes and black veils and a trumpet and drum band followed them. The faithful witnessed the religious celebration with veneration. Some exhibited overwhelming emotions.Others attended the event as if it were a pagan festival. A few viewed it with absolute indifference. I took the picture shown above. A woman sings a saeta—a religious ballad—from her balcony when the procession stops in front of her home. Her spontaneous display of devotion, probably prompted by a promise to God, slashes through the dense silence of the crowd. A round of applause rewards her performance.
A few days ago, I was told an anecdote. An African-American woman happened to arrive in Seville during the Holy Week. She bumped into a procession and freaked out. The lines of penitents in white robes and sharply pointed hats reminded her of the lynchings of the Ku Klux Klan. This incident was not the first one. Cervantes describes another one in “Don Quixote”:
“Where are you going, Senor Don Quixote? What devils have possessed you to set you on against our Catholic faith? Plague take me! mind, that is a procession of penitents, and the lady they are carrying on that stand there is the blessed image of the immaculate Virgin. Take care what you are doing, senor, for this time it may be safely said you don’t know what you are about.” Sancho laboured in vain, for his master was so bent on coming to quarters with these sheeted figures and releasing the lady in black that he did not hear a word; and even had he heard, he would not have turned back if the king had ordered him. He came up with the procession and reined in Rocinante, who was already anxious enough to slacken speed a little, and in a hoarse, excited voice he exclaimed, “You who hide your faces, perhaps because you are not good subjects, pay attention and listen to what I am about to say to you.” The first to halt were those who were carrying the image, and one of the four ecclesiastics who were chanting the Litany, struck by the strange figure of Don Quixote, the leanness of Rocinante, and the other ludicrous peculiarities he observed, said in reply to him, “Brother, if you have anything to say to us say it quickly, for these brethren are whipping themselves, and we cannot stop, nor is it reasonable we should stop to hear anything, unless indeed it is short enough to be said in two words.”
“I will say it in one,” replied Don Quixote, “and it is this; that at once, this very instant, ye release that fair lady whose tears and sad aspect show plainly that ye are carrying her off against her will, and that ye have committed some scandalous outrage against her; and I, who was born into the world to redress all such like wrongs, will not permit you to advance another step until you have restored to her the liberty she pines for and deserves.”
From these words all the hearers concluded that he must be a madman, and began to laugh heartily, and their laughter acted like gunpowder on Don Quixote’s fury, for drawing his sword without another word he made a rush at the stand. One of those who supported it, leaving the burden to his comrades, advanced to meet him, flourishing a forked stick that he had for propping up the stand when resting, and with this he caught a mighty cut Don Quixote made at him that severed it in two; but with the portion that remained in his hand he dealt such a thwack on the shoulder of Don Quixote’s sword arm (which the buckler could not protect against the clownish assault) that poor Don Quixote came to the ground in a sad plight.
From “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes
