In Madrid, the giants are out for San Isidro
Today at noon a procession of giants will dance past the royal palace and the Almudena cathedral in Madrid and down the Calle Mayor. The giants, 12ft tall, are surprisingly light on their feet and can spin and tilt to a dance rhythm.
Among the giants will be Alfonso VI, king of León when William the Conqueror arrived in England. He reconquered Toledo from the Moors. Another giant is Beatriz Galindo, who lived at the time of our Henry VIII. She was nicknamed La Latina, not for her taste in music, but for her accomplishment in classical learning. A metro station was named after her. I am not sure whether the giant Muhammad I, who ruled Córdoba in the ninth century, will join the throng.
These giants are like the wickerwork figures that feature in a sonnet by Francisco de Quevedo (a contemporary of Shakespeare), who likens them to the pretences that go with life at court. In the 18th century Charles III banned giants – but that was in Corpus Christi processions, where they were thought disrespectful in proximity to the Blessed Sacrament. Giants in different parts of Spain went on being used in festivities or neglected for decades.
Although they refer to olden days, these giant figures in Madrid have only been brought out since 1967. Traditions have a way of being invented, not only in Spain. Today’s giants are on the street for the fiesta of San Isidro, patron of Madrid.
Festivities and accompanying bullfights go on beyond his festal day in the calendar, May 15. That is the day for a pilgrimage to the chapel at St Isidore’s Meadows on the other side of the river Manzanares. Goya shows cheerful picnickers there in 1788. Thirty years later, in one of his Black Paintings, he depicts the pilgrims as drunken, distorted monsters.
May 15 is a chance for a retro sort of Madrid self-celebration, with men and women dressing up a little like Victorian costers. It is slightly grating or heartwarming, according to one’s disposition. The
originals chosen for the Madrid giant procession reflect aspects of national life. One of them began life as a farm labourer – Andrés Torrejón, the Mayor of Móstoles. He it was who, with the fellow mayor of a town near Madrid, raised the alarm at French atrocities in Madrid on May 2 1808 and declared a popular war against them.
As in other fiestas, the giants are accompanied by cabezudos, “big-heads”, worn by people to represent “types” or famous bandits, bullfighters, orange-women and jesters. The Spanish names are quite unknown to British ears, but it is as if they stood for Dick Turpin, Nell Gwyn or Archie Armstrong, the jester of James I of England.
As for San Isidro Labrador, the “farm labourer”, he may be identified in churches all over Spain by a miniature yoke of oxen (used by an angel in legend obligingly to do his ploughing for him). He is also shown with what looks like a spear, but is really a long-handled spade.
The attraction of having a patron saint who knew the hardship of tilling the land in a harsh country is obvious, and for years I assumed that San Isidro was the sort of saint about whom nothing much is known.
There are legends about him, such as his kindly feeding pigeons in winter with grain, but he did exist, dying on May 15 1172. He was canonised, in 1622, along with three great Spanish saints: Teresa of Avila, Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier. His relics are venerated in the church originally dedicated to St Francis Xavier, now San Isidro – nearest metro station La Latina.