On the Shores of the Mediterranean (51 page)

Then the Capataz, the foreman of the Costaleros, dressed in a black suit, banged with a gavel on a metal plaque set on the first of the two
pasos
, the one with Jesus the Nazarene embracing the Cross, at the same time shouting,
‘Elevar!’
and when the Costaleros had raised it had banged on it again, this time with the words
‘Adelante! Marcha!’
(Go on! Forward march!’), and the forty-two Costaleros, having stood up with the dreadful load poised on the napes of their necks, moved forward, together with two files of Nazarenos, the name applied to members of the Brotherhood who were taking part in the procession, wearing black hoods and tunics, wide belts woven from esparto grass and carrying purple candles.

Then the second float was raised and set in motion, that of the Virgin of the Conception and St John, escorted by Nazarenos carrying white candles and preceded by a Hermano, a brother, bearing a drawn sword, a warning that all the members of this Brotherhood are dedicated to defend the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, even at the cost of their lives, and were so-dedicated centuries before it became dogma. Then the Whistles of Silence began again and the procession swayed out of sight.

There was an elegant crowd in the Convent of San Gregorio when we reached it around six o’clock. There were young men in dark suits and black ties and white collars who looked as if they might be bankers. (There is in fact a Brotherhood largely made up of bank employees, Our Father Jesus before Annas, Sacred Christ of the Great Pain, and Holy Mary of the Sweet Name, popularly and perhaps appropriately known as La Bofetada, The Slap, also as the Dulce Nombre, Sweet Name.) Or they could have been
accountants,
negociante de vino
, landowners, lawyers on the way up. Even those who looked as if they might still be on the lowest rungs of whatever ladder they were on, showed unmistakable signs that they would eventually rise to the top of it providing they didn’t make a boob of whatever ritual they might be called upon to carry out, in this, El Real Hermandad Sacramental del Santo Entierro de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo y Maria Santísima de Villaviciosa.

And there were older men wearing morning coats and the sort of grumpy expressions that seem to come as second nature to members of the Spanish upper crust, with the medallions of the Hermandad slung round their necks. They were already at the top, presidents of corporations, and that was what they looked like; one or two of them sufficiently groggy-looking to make one think that they might suddenly fall off their particular ladder, thus giving younger members a chance to go up a rung or two.

Conspicuous among this resplendent band, the younger of whom had not yet started to change into their ceremonial gear, were the wives and girl friends, all dressed up to the nines, some also in black, but all subfusc and as smart as guardsmen. In fact the whole thing was reminiscent of a gathering of officers and their girl friends and madams in the Guards Chapel for a memorial service. They certainly did not look like the sort of women who were employed to dress and undress the Virgin before and after the procession, and they were not, this delicate task being entrusted to those who are usually themselves virgins, but of a certain age. No man is permitted to take this liberty, not even a priest.

This was a Brotherhood of the Establishment, the oldest of all the Brotherhoods of Seville, founded in 1148 by King Ferdinand III of Castile. Known as El Santo, although he was not canonized until 1671 and twenty years after his death, Ferdinand was a
Catholic ruler of such extraordinary religious zeal that he not only helped to pile the faggots around the followers of the Albigensian heresy who were sentenced by an early form of Inquisition to suffer the equivalent of the
auto-da-fé
, but himself applied the torch to them with his own hands. He founded the Brotherhood three hundred years before the Semana Santa began to be celebrated as it is today, which was in the sixteenth century, in order that his newly liberated subjects might have their faith reinforced by an annual procession. The second most ancient of the Brotherhoods of Holy Week was El Silencio, which was founded on 14 March 1340, in what are known as the Carnestolendas, those last three days of carnival when the prohibition against eating meat becomes imminent with the onset of Lent. It was founded with the intention of perpetuating the memory of the journey to Calvary and at that time and for long afterwards its members carried crosses, walked barefoot and wore crowns of thorns, practices which together with flagellation and the wearing of chains did not become extinct among some penitents until after the last war, although all the Brotherhoods always have a number of voluntary penitents who still carry heavy crosses and walk barefoot. The members of El Silencio, by virtue of their devotion to Jesus the Nazarene, were known as Nazarenos, the name by which all members of Brotherhoods who take part in the processions of Holy Week in memory of the penitential progression of Christ to Calvary are known, and notwithstanding the existence of the Brotherhood of Santo Entierro, which predates it by nearly a hundred years, El Silencio is known as Madre y Maestra, Mother and Mistress, of all the Hermandados or Cofradias which make up the Brotherhoods of Seville.

Soon after six o’clock those members of the Santo Entierro who were going to take part in the procession began to transform themselves into Nazarenos in the sacristy of the convent which
belongs to the Padres Mercedarios, the Mercedarians, the Fathers of the Order of St Mary. They put on their long black tunics, attaching the long black sleeves, which were separate, with safety pins, of which there were not enough to go round until someone was sent out to buy some. Then they rolled up their trousers so that they would not show below the hems of their tunics, for although the legs of the trousers must not be seen the trousers must not be taken off, as I was told. A host of Nazarenos, emulating the journey to Calvary and escorting the Virgin of Villaviciosa without trousers, would be not only unthinkable but positively scandalous.

When all this was done to their satisfaction, they scrutinized themselves in the one clouded mirror with which the sacristy was provided, crowding round it rather like model girls taking a last look at themselves before beginning to show a spring collection. Then they donned the immensely tall black pointed hoods, which completed the disguise, turning them in an instant from keen, conservative, ambitious young men into strange, unearthly, eerie figures, with only the eyes flickering behind the twin eyeholes in the hoods to show that hidden behind them was not some sort of foul fiend but a human being. These were the Nazarenos. In a sense they were Penitentes; but the real Penitentes wore hoods that hung loose down their backs, walked barefooted and carried heavy wooden crosses on their shoulders.

Of all the Brotherhoods the Santo Entierro was the smallest. Altogether it only had 100 members and of these 80 were taking part in the procession. Some Brotherhoods were enormous. La Estrella, founded in 1566 by shipyard workers of Seville, Cadiz and other ports trading with the New World, had 2260 brothers of whom 1000 Nazarenos took part in the procession; El Gran Poder, 4894 brothers with almost a thousand participants; La Macarena had 5893 members, 1007 of whom were Nazarenos;
La Esperanza de Triana 3542 brothers, 800 of whom were Nazarenos.

It was now 6.25 p.m. In five minutes the procession was due to begin. It was a strange scene. The body of the church was now crowded with Nazarenos, some swinging thuribles of incense, some carrying wands and silver crosses or else lighting their big four-foot-long candles, barefooted Penitentes trying the weight of their heavy crosses and the ninety-six Costaleros (others were in reserve) of the Cuadrilla de Domingo Rojas. It was they who would carry the three floats of the Brotherhood. Rough-looking members of the working class, dressed in white vests and wearing canvas shoes, some of them bottle-nosed, some with huge paunches, they were the sort of men who until the introduction of containers and automation into the port area of the city had earned their living as stevedores. What they did now, apart from lugging the
pasos
of El Santo Entierro round Seville once a year, was unclear. Perhaps they had been declared redundant, as had the stevedores at Naples and almost everywhere else, and given such massive severance pay that they no longer had to bother. Or perhaps they were members of a union who were unsackable even if their jobs had disappeared. Whatever they were, they were not the kind of men of whom I was anxious to ask such questions.

On their heads they wore turbans of white cloth wound in such a way that a thick pad, sometimes stuffed with sand and sawdust, protected the nape of the neck on which almost the entire weight of the enormously heavy
paso
has to be supported. The weight is taken on a wooden bar, one of a number of such bars beneath the float, one behind the other, sufficient for whatever number of men are needed to carry it, which varies between twenty-five and forty-eight and exceptionally, to carry the huge first float of the Brotherhood of Sacred Christ of Exaltation and Our Lady of Tears, known as Los Caballos, fifty-four men. These
headcloths gave the Costaleros a distinctly biblical air, but of those who mocked the Saviour rather than of those who supported him. Paid to do this work, presumably handsomely, they were a race apart. Few members of the Brotherhood appeared to take much notice of them, but nevertheless they were the most important participants in the entire procession, for without them the floats could not form part of it. They well deserved whatever they earned, for however thick the wrappings, by the time they returned to the church, around a quarter to eleven that night, many of them would have deep wounds in the backs of their necks.

In recent years it has become so difficult to recruit Costaleros, and so expensive, that the majority of the Brotherhoods now employ their own members to carry the
pasos
. It was difficult to imagine the brothers of the Santo Entierro agreeing to do this but as it would be impossible anyway, in a Brotherhood numbering only one hundred members, the question does not arise.

One of the first Cofradias to carry its own float was the very large Brotherhood of the Christ of the Good Death (de la Buena Muerte), otherwise known as Los Estudiantes, founded in 1924 by professors and students of Seville University which is housed in what used to be the Royal Tobacco Factory, an immense eighteenth-century building and the scene of the first act of Bizet’s
Carmen
. There is a Cofradia of Tobacco-workers, Las Cigarreras, Our Father Jesus Tied to the Column, and Holy Mary of Victory, founded in 1562, which had for its head, its Hermano Mayor, King Alfonso XIII, grandfather of the present King Juan Carlos, who until his abdication in 1930 himself used to take part in the procession. They keep their two floats in the Chapel of the New Tobacco Factory, on the other side of the river in the district called Los Remedios. There is also a Brotherhood of Gypsies, Los Gitanos, whose women dance the flamenco outside their church of San Roman while waiting for the
pasos
bearing Christ walking towards
Calvary and the Virgin of the Anguishes to appear; of Negroes, Los Negritos, formed in 1390 by a group of black Africans, although there are very few black Africans now; two Brotherhoods of Bullfighters, one, El Baratillo, named after its church at the bullring, the other San Bernardo. There is a Brotherhood of Bakers, Los Panaderos, and of Hotel and Restaurant Workers, known as Santa Maria. There is even a Brotherhood of Judges, Lawyers and members of the Guardia Civil, the Siete Palabras, The Seven Words; and of Travel Agents, Our Father Jesus of Health and Good Voyage, known as Buen Viaje.

High overhead, dominating everything else in the chapel of the Convent of San Gregorio, were the three floats of the Santo Entierro. The first, La Muerte, otherwise known as La Canina, represents the Triumph of the Holy Cross over Sin and Death. At the foot of the now-vacant cross, with the ladders used to lower the body of the dead Christ from it still in position and with long strips of funereal drapery hanging from it, a skeleton, Death, sits on a globe of the world which is enfolded by a serpent bearing in its mouth an apple, the emblem of Original Sin, Death itself in an attitude of despair and dejection, its skull bent, supported by a skeletal hand. This, the most macabre of all the
pasos
, made its first appearance in 1693 and this present skeleton was carved in 1829 by Juan de Astorga. Among all the 112
pasos
paraded by the fifty-six Brotherhoods in Holy Week, La Muerte is unique, the only one that has this particular allegorical character.

The second
paso
bears La Urna, Cristo Yacente, Christ Recumbent in a great gilded, crystal panelled, Gothic casket, wearing only a loincloth. The figure was carved in the seventeenth century by Juan de Mesa. This is the Santo Entierro, the Holy Burial, from which the Brotherhood takes its name.

The third and last
paso
carries El Duelo, the Mourning. The figure of the Virgin of Villaviciosa carved by Antonio Cardoso
Quirós in 1691, tearful, with head bowed, wears a golden halo instead of a crown, a black mantle embroidered with gold thread and carries in her hands the Crown of Thorns. With her are John the Evangelist, St Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and the Three Marys, carved at the same time as La Muerte by Juan de Astorga.

At half past six the great doors of the Convent were flung open and, together with some half dozen Nazarenos, some carrying red candles, one, Guillermo Mira Abaurrea, the Diputado Mayor of the Brotherhood, a tall imposing figure, carrying the leading cross of the Brotherhood, I emerged in the beautiful soft evening light of Seville in spring into a street packed with people who miraculously gave way as we advanced towards them, making a passage for us.

Meanwhile the Costaleros waited invisible beneath the
pasos
. Then the Capataz banged on the metal plaque with his gavel, at the same time shouting,
‘Elevar!’
, and forty-two Costaleros struggled to their feet beneath their macabre load, bearing the first of the three
pasos
, La Muerte. Then he banged again, this time shouting,
‘Adelante! Marcha!’
and they began to shuffle forward. The upright of the empty cross was higher than the archway of the church door and they only cleared it because they bent their knees in what must have been an agonizing position, bowed beneath the awful weight of the
paso
. Then it, too, was in the open air with its funereal hangings moving in the light air and with the skeleton’s ribs trembling horribly. There were none of the cheers that would have greeted the successful accomplishment of such a difficult manoeuvre had this been a less austere, more popular float, such as one of those of the Triana or La Macarena. Instead, as had been El Silencio, it was greeted with silence. You cannot cheer Death, however much you might welcome him. In the 733rd year of its existence the procession of the Santo Entierro was once more on its way.