All roads lead to El Rocío
Joe Gibbs joins a little-known pilgrimage
Living, as we are told we are, in the post-christian age, the revival of interest in pilgrimage routes in Europe seems a remarkable phenomenon. Mention Spanish pilgrimage, and thoughts usually turn to the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the Way of St James—annual numbers completing the trail have swelled over the past 30 years from 3,500 to more than 300,000.
At the other end of the country, there’s a pilgrimage of a very different hue that, despite its large number of participants, is barely known outside Spain. Each year at Pentecost, the vivid primary colours of flamenco light up the small village of El Rocío in the Doñana national park, where, in the 13th century, a hunter from Almonte discovered a statue of the virgin Mary in a tree.
Where Santiago’s pilgrimage is cosmopolitan and spread out over the summer months, the Romería Del Rocío’s participants, up to a million strong, are overwhelmingly southern Spanish and their pilgrimage builds to one climactic weekend of wild celebration.
Whereas anyone can undertake the Way of St James as they please, pilgrims to El Rocío travel as part of hermandades del Rocío, religious brotherhoods from 120 towns and cities in Andalusía.
it was as a guest of the Ronda confraternity that i set out in an advance guard one misty May morning. i was told we would travel as six riders and a one-legged muleteer driving a team of four and a baggage cart carrying a vital cool box.
However, it’s the way of things in southern Spain that very little runs quite as anticipated and so it was that we left Ronda as three riders leading an ancient packhorse with no cool box. By the time we reached El Rocío, we would number 30,000 on horseback alone.
Our first days took us along ancient stone tracks and Roman roads, slipping and sliding through the Sierra de grazalema. A millefleur of wildflowers ran among the oats and barley on the lower slopes; higher up grew wild orchids and peonies swollen as big as tea cups. Wild asparagus pickers wished us ‘buen camino’ and cuckoos serenaded us. nights were spent in hammocks
At every halt, pilgrims danced and sang flamenco airs while the crowd clapped
slung between trees, eating in isolated
tabernas. One evening, coming down onto the plains along a river, every bush seemed to harbour a nightingale.
As we descended to the dusty, white tracks of the plain, we spotted other parties of horsemen in the distance and, by the time we reached the ferry crossing of the Guadalquivir at Coria del Río, the rest of our Ronda confraternity awaited us. This numbered 20 tractor-towed wagons, shaped like large gypsy caravans, each housing a kitchen, a bathroom and sleeping quarters for 10 people. My hosts’ wagon contained two families and their friends, including two eye surgeons from Ronda.
The party had clearly started, as the eye surgeons, descending to greet me, missed all the steps and landed in a heap at my feet. The Andalusian genius for turning every occasion into a fiesta is never far away, but, as you might expect on a pilgrimage, the religious element holds centre stage. Many were undertaking the journey as thanksgiving for salvation from an illness.
Each hermandad takes with it a Simpecado (literally, without sin), a cart decorated as a silver shrine with an effigy of the Virgin Mary of El Rocío, patiently pulled through the deep sand trails by two oxen. Each Simpecado forms the centrepiece around which the confraternity parks in a circle at night.
Every morning, ladies decorate it with fresh flowers and light its candles before a priest holds a service; whenever a river is crossed, the Simpecado halts midstream and, as the oxen bend to drink, a priest raises his hand over them in blessing.
At the village of Villamanrique, the drover, a small boy, urged the
Simpecado up the steps of the church with a ‘hey’ and a ‘ho’; after a blessing, he reversed them skilfully back down like a conductor, the huge beasts responding to tiny hand movements and touches from his baton.
At every halt, pilgrims danced and sang flamenco airs while the crowd clapped the
palmas accompaniment—every landmark has its own song. Making no culinary concession to being on the road, families cooked produce from their farms. Ice-cold beer, sherry and spirits flowed. The following morning, a bracing anis helped riders back into the saddle and storks tidied up the scraps.
El Rocío looks like a village out of a spaghetti western. The roads are dirt tracks and the streets are lined with hitching rails for horses. From Saturday noon, in order of seniority, the brotherhoods paraded their Simpecados to the sanctuary, where their copies of the Virgin were presented to the original. Firecrackers went off, catching out riders with flighty horses.
A candlelight procession with standards and drums and a pontifical Mass followed. Finally, the men of Almonte removed the Virgin, the Paloma Blanca, from her sanctuary on a heavy float and paraded her before the crowds until well after dawn.
If ever proof is needed that pilgrimage continues to thrive, look no further than this extraordinary convergence of Andalusían culture and faith. For more information about El Rocío and the Doñana, which is also famous for its bird life, visit www.andalucia.com