I would like, reader friend, share with you some reflections that have come to my head in recent days. Death and life have gathered, pushing each other, as if they were in a hurry to climb a subway car. He had not finished resuscitating Christ, when the Pope dies. If Holy Week has lived with some recollection, the succession of sublime facts has overwhelmed the imagination of the most calm. Once again the liturgy, the sacred staging of the triumph of life over death, has traveled temples, streets and consciences.
With its variants, we have thus from the Baroque back, from the seventeenth century, towards the night of time. And in Spain, a country of rich customs, in which the premises have survived with the cosmopolitas, Holy Week is lived especially in two ways: the oldest, from the Tagus to the north; The newest of the Tagus to the south. Medievalizing one, post -western the other. Of recollection and externalization of religion; of silence, or seeing and being seen. It is not an aesthetic issue, it is not a vacuum “I like this more” this or the other, but to live death and resurrection with affliction, or with a spirit of triumph.
Therefore, the sociological phenomenon we are living in Madrid for a couple of five years here is – I say it without second – exciting. Passionate. A long time ago, when one was “hung” in Madrid, you could comfort with torrijas, many torrijas, and then at home watching on TV what was happening in La Rioja, in Zamora, or in Malaga, to put some random examples. Going to see processions in Madrid, was, at least depressing, while “casposillo”. The Christ of Medinaceli went through the career of San Jerónimo mounted on a tractor trailer with his wheels and everything that they were dragging, more or less. However, this Good Friday, it was carried more than a hundred Anderos. Well, rather, they tried to carry because the rain drowned everything. The damn climate change that makes it rain during Holy Week and in San Isidro, in the spring months of April and May. And the poor Christ could only go to the door of the temple, while she escaped some excited tear, and the mayor accompanied the cardinal contemplating the maneuvers of the costalers, in the hope that they would not slide all ramp below embedding in the bar of the Cervantes brewery.
Thus they have passed these days in Madrid, for the second or third year, with a well -defined itinerary, converging all processions at the Puerta del Sol, with their stands and everything. And the sizes, even if they are five years ago, or the thrones are still unfinished, they have tried to take to the streets from the cathedrals, the military and the episcopal, or from the parishes of the Madrid of the Renaissance, which made so many mosques churches -such as San Pedro -, applying the old scheme of the recruption of the defeated. There has not been any movement of the Majadericos that propose cancellation and all those things, but at this step, at the same time (they send me from Vienna interesting data of schooling for religions in public schools and Europe-of classic Greco-Latin and Christian origins-goes through the sink). And the streets, I say, full of people. One of the triumphs of this Holy Week has been to try to hold Madrid in Madrid. By “Madrid” we will understand those who live in Madrid. By sharing the same cultural trunk, expanded by a transoceanic empire and for three centuries, the Spanish of Spain and the Spanish of America were heard without stopping; His speakers were already seen, without a doubt, the same parties that from the south of the United States to Ushuaia are celebrated with all the variants that are desired, with the eclecticisms that survive but that have a common point, it is understood or not, which is the same: nobody took out the body of the grave, but resurrected. And there were, as a sign, the bandages thrown by the ground.
The third parties to be in mind is to foreign tourists: to that crowd of stunned beings that many of them cannot understand anything, cultivated in their heresies contrary to saints and relics, or more recent movements. What will they think of being crushed by the crowds they saw, or tried to see, so many sizes, of Cristes and Marías, everywhere? And accompanied by music, voluntarily defined, torn.
Many wanted to steal their childhood and youth. They have been intended to see, I do not know what reason, that the feelings that united their grandparents and perhaps those peoples of childhood, were rites little less than polytheistic, or puppets in motion. And in the end, such is the tiredness that we have of so many things, so “tired” is to be supporting several kicks in save is the part, or Tobitas in the ears, which, in their own way, people have thrown themselves into the street; It is not that he is thrown, but that he has thrown himself. AND He has been thrown to load with I do not know how many kilos behind his back, for I don’t know how many hours and if it could not be done for the rain, the disappointment was monumental. But it is like this: Holy Week has made emotions resurrect and defend the common cultural trunk, which is individual, is the memory of our families.
In the midst of this triumph of faith, or religion, which any Jesuit of the Baroque would say, The poor Pope dies, after several weeks preparing for traffic and after a silent and overwhelming -For discreet- farewell to his faithful, in the silence of a stroke and a coma. Rest in peace.
Madrid only needs to print more brochures of the processions of the processions, follow the genius of Immaculate Galván on Telemadrid (what a young lady so many years ago when she began to broadcast those processions so tristones!) And above all, get the Christ of Mena to also go out the streets of the town with court.
Life, the desire to live! They have defeated cancellation, persecution. Get up and go!