“Bonita, you can’t wear that flamenco dress on the El Rocio pilgrimage,” Airbnb host María Cardenas said with a laugh. “It’s hot and I’m going to die.”
She held a thick red cloth between her thumbs and held it over my face like a specimen. “You see? A thick, tight dress like this was made for the bullfighting festival in the city of Seville,” she explained. “Pilgrimages require lightweight, stretchy polyester for horseback riding, walking, dancing and napping in the grass.”
The El Rocío Pilgrimage is an annual multi-day festival in Andalusia, Spain’s southernmost region, a frenzied religious spectacle of flamenco costumes, caravans and religious fervor. waning influence of the Catholic Church.
Participants spend months preparing, planning menus, renting tractors and arranging caravans. There is also a need for a dress selection that exudes all Goya elegance while allowing the wearer to defecate in the shade of the bush. Duchess of Alba.
After spending a year in Seville in 2012, my collaborator Kevin has long dreamed of returning to document the El Rocio pilgrimage, which was canceled for the second year in a row due to the pandemic. My connection with Spain is more recent. Deciding that life is too short not to live on a Mediterranean island, he moved to Mallorca last year. Kevin and I regularly work together on our travel business. When he mentioned El Rocio, he simply said yes. Because the best way to get to know a new country is to party there.
While we were documenting the 2022 pilgrimage (which this year will take place at the end of May), we were also at the celebration. Famous for flamenco dancing, cowboy culture and pilgrimages, Andalusia has a unique and enchanting identity that people in the south of Spain are rightfully proud of.
The pilgrimage to El Rocio is perhaps the most powerful visual representation of Andalusian culture, and it is this, as much as the religious fervor, that draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to the Shrine of Our Lady in the village of El Rocio. I’m driving you. Some travel on foot, others in elaborately decorated caravans. Many people ride horses. Rigid, tight-fitting riders in wide-brimmed hats, high-waisted paseo trousers, and cropped Guayabera jackets.
On the first day, Kevin and I walked around the Doñana National Park, about 40 minutes south of central Seville, looking for the pilgrims who were sure to be there. Then came the faint sound of cowbells, the clatter of horse hooves, the creaking of caravan wheels, the sound of flamenco guitars, and singing in unison. Within minutes, the dusty road turned into a festival. A caravan passed by. Pilgrims pressed bottles of Cruzcampo beer and slices of Iberian ham into our hands. The song reached its climax.
Catholicism is taken seriously in Spain. But so are beer, ham and cheese, even if it’s 10am.
Many Andalusian cities, towns and villages have developed their own pilgrimage routes (known as romerias, so named because pilgrims traditionally walk to Rome) dedicated to a particular patron saint. But the four-day walk to El Rocio has achieved cult status.
According to legend, a statue of the Virgin Mary was found hundreds of years ago in a tree trunk in the swamps of the Guadalquivir River. For centuries, worship of this shrine was confined to the surrounding towns of Almonte and Villamanrique de la Condesa. In the 20th century, however, the Hermandads (Brotherhood) of Pentecost pilgrims began to arrive in the region from the areas around Seville and Huelva, and eventually across Andalusia, from Madrid, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands, and elsewhere. It took him four days to reach it. Canary Islands. At night, the nomads camped in the woods, ate together at long tables, and danced flamenco around the campfire until they could no longer ignore the realities of the next day’s 15-mile hike.
Kevin and I share an obsession with international festivals. His urge is to take portraits, while mine is to listen and learn. But wherever we go, Kevin and I tend to stick to our faces.
At El Rocio, no face was closed to outsiders. We were invited to a caravan. We were told to sit down and have some stew and sliced watermelon. You will be drawn into flamenco dancing. Then I was instructed to take a nap on the lawn after lunch. Otherwise, “you won’t be able to live until Sunday,” said one participant. None of the people we met were unwilling to be interviewed or photographed. Everyone seemed to accept that El Rocio is a spectacle. Our surprise and curiosity were taken as a sign of respect.
We joined the caravan in the muddy waters of Quema, a ford of the Guadalquimar River, a tributary of the Guadalquivir River. In the town of Villamanrique de la Condesa, every restaurant and bar was filled with spectators. (El Rocio is televised like a sporting event all over Spain.)
By Friday night, the first wanderers had reached El Rocio. El Rocio was a small town that reminded me of the western sets I had seen in California and Arizona. Its character is formed entirely by pilgrimage. More prominent nomads, such as Huelva, with its 10,000 pilgrims, own huge boarding houses on the outskirts of town, with monastery-like rooms and vast communal dining and dancing areas. Small nomads are only looking for short term rentals. Despite our novice Spanish, we were ushered into a whitewashed house and given a beer, chunks of Manchego cheese and a slice of prosciutto. It struck me that most of the Spanish staples were essentially pilgrim food, spoiled and turned into delicacies.
In El Rocio, religious fervor was visible in the streets, in the churro huts, and in the nomads themselves. But there was also enthusiasm for enthusiasm itself. I am the Irish daughter of a Presbyterian minister, and I grew up in a no-frills religious celebration. Tea and scones are as decadent as any Presbyterian celebration. In El Rocio, I found myself intoxicated with the idea that glamorous rituals and ceremonies and pilgrimages can and should be sources of revelry.
Friday night melted into Saturday morning, and Kevin and I found ourselves chatting with two young friends from Madrid who were in their 30s like us. They told us that once young people wanted to escape from religious traditions. But El Rocio, they say, is a place to escape the stresses of modern life.
“I love El Rocio because it’s the only time a year when the whole family gets together. “For a week, it’s healthy to forget about city life, city clothes, technology, work, pressures, etc.”
“It’s good for the spirit to be steeped in tradition,” she added.