Semana Santa in España

Spain's definitely a Catholic country.  You can tell every Sunday when all the people in town disappear to go to church.  You can tell when the biggest thing in town IS a church.  It stands to reason, therefore, that the biggest celebrations of the year would be the Catholic holidays - Christmas and Easter.  Well, I wrote about La Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos here in Baza last January, but that was nothing on the week that is Semana Santa - the death and resurrection of God's son, Jesus Christ.

The chief method of worship during Semana Santa, sometimes referred to in English as 'Holy Week', is the procesiones.  There were 11 of these during Baza over eight days, but larger cities like Seville can have as many as 60, sometimes going all night.  A procesión is basically a religious parade put on by one or multiple brotherhoods, paying homage to the central figure of that brotherhood.

To explain brotherhoods: here in Spain, you don't just worship Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary - who, by the way, is even bit as big a deal as her son is, around here.  People also worship different aspects of the Virgin or Christ or those two figures at different points in the Bible story, known as imagenes - for example, there's Our Lady of Mercy, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Hope, Christ of Love, Christ of the Resurrection, Christ of the Mendez (don't ask me about that last one, I have no idea).  People who are devotees of a particular imagen pay their yearly dues to the brotherhood to receive the newsletter, yearbook and medal of the imagen, and those devotees make up most of the people in each procesión (apparently you can pay a fee to participate if you're not a member but still want to join in).

Anyway, different brotherhoods will organise a procesión for their imagen, centred around a float depicting that imagen, known as a paso.  There's a fairly consistent structure for a procesión.  At the front will be a penitente, a penitent devotee of the brotherhood, garbed in the flowing cloak and pointed capirote hat that we've all seen on TV and mistaken for the KKK, carrying a large ornate metal cross.

Following them will be a series of children, clad in the same robes but bare-headed, often carrying a series of small crosses roped together in a string, and passing out lollies to children in the crowd.  

Behind the children come the rest of the adult penitentes, wearing the pointed capirotes and carrying tall candles.

 

Each brotherhood has a different pair of colours represented in their capes, capirotes and belts or sashes.

The final penitente carries an ornate book that I believe has to do with their imagen.

Next are a set of female penitentes known as manolas, ranging in age from about 4 to 70, dressed all in black dresses or skirts, and with a long black lace mantilla flowing from a headpiece down to their ankles, who symbolically share the sorrow of the Virgin at the death of her son Jesus.  

My friend Blanca as a manola

Next there are often some dignitaries or senior members of the brotherhood, dressed formally in suits and with their brotherhood medals hanging prominently around their necks.  

Behind them come a group of altar boys and girls, some carrying wicker baskets and others carrying censers of burning incense to 'purify' the path of the paso.  

Finally, the main point of the procesión, a large wooden or gilded 'float' called a paso with some depiction of Jesus or Mary, elaborately carved and garbed and surrounded by fresh flowers.  This is carried on the shoulders of 30 or 40 of the burliest men in the brotherhood, who are very well-rehearsed at marching in slow unison.  

Bringing up the rear of the procesión is the band, a different one for each procesión, which plays on and off throughout the procession and whose drummers play continuously to set the marching pace for the paso-bearers.

Of course, not every procesión is identical.  One featured a barefoot penitente marching behind the paso, carrying a large wooden cross.

Others featured female penitentes behind the paso with chains around their ankles dragging behind them.

The procesión of Our Lady of Hope (Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza) fired hundreds of flower petals over the crowd.  Perhaps the most interesting was the procesión of the Cristo Resucitado - the Resurrected Christ, a much smaller paso that was carried entirely by children, and preceded by the young penitentes of every other procesión held throughout the week.

The other interesting phenomenon that I saw twice occurred when two different pasos, one of Mary and one of Jesus, were both in procesiones at the same time, sometimes in the same procesión.  One of the pasos would turn to face the other, then, in a sign of respect, the bearers of the paso featuring Jesus would lift the paso above their heads with both hands.  It was both cool and surreal at the same time.

The light on the church wall is the front candle on the Jesus paso

I would love to post a hundred more photos of Semana Santa - I honestly took about 500 - but I don't have a spare week to go through them all! 

The best part of the week for me was that I had students in almost every single procesión, which made it very personal for me - though since at least some of those students were wearing capirotes, I have no idea who they were!

The Auxiliar Diaries: What To Pack

Before my auxiliar exchange I read a zillion blogs about every aspect of the experience. Some were helpful, and some were really not! So here's my guide on how to be an auxiliar in Spain, based on my experiences.

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One of the many things I read about before arriving was how to pack for your year (well, eight months) in Spain, and it all seemed like very sage advice. The result? I got to my new home and went, "What on EARTH was I thinking and why haven't I brought ANYTHING useful??" So - how to pack for Spain according to me...

First things first, it must be noted that I spent six weeks elsewhere in Europe before I actually moseyed on over to Spain, so my packing list was going to be a bit different anyway. I had one small backpack for carry-on, one large backpack as checked baggage and my suitcase. The suitcase, eventually, was shipped to Spain from my arrival point in Europe (well, almost, but that's a whole 'nother story!) and I simply carried my two backpacks around.

First rule of thumb: use all your baggage. The blogs I read all said to pack light, which seemed smart, except that I packed so light that I only had one pair of jeans and all the summer dresses I'd brought for August in Italy, and I can tell you those are less useful in December in Spain. So - if you have the room, use it. Sure, leave a little room for souvenirs coming home, but clothes will wear out and get left behind, and I also brought some presents for people I'd meet in Spain which will leave space in my suitcase on the return trip. As it stands, thanks to my light packing, I left a full wardrobe back in Australia and am paying for a whole new one because I was too stupid to put any of it in my suitcase.

Second rule, in conjunction with the above: if you've got it and you'll wear it, bring it. Since a lot of my clothes needed replacing around the time I left, I figured I'd save myself the luggage space and do my shopping here in Spain, since I'd heard the sales were great. That may be true in the big cities, but in Baza it took me months to find jeans in my size - in fact, I found them in Granada. It would have saved me a lot of time, money and stress to do a shopping trip before I left and bring it all with me. Plus, doing your shopping at home gives you a better idea of your overseas budget instead of blowing it all on clothes as soon as you arrive.

Third rule: pack whole outfits. Bring the tights or leggings you wear with that dress, include the white tank you need with that shirt, pack the belt that stops your jeans from falling down. Otherwise you've just got an outfit you can't wear, which is a waste of the aforementioned luggage space, or more shopping to do - see above note about buying a whole new wardrobe. Also remember that you'll be around mostly for the colder winter months, so do pack your winter wooolies. Gloves, a beanie and two scarves won't take up as much space as you think, and there's another 50€ you don't have to spend replacing things you already have.

Lastly, if there's something you particularly love from home, bring it. Dressing gowns aren't exactly a top packing priority, but since I practically live in mine, I consider it crucial to my mental health. I was also sad when I realised I'd left my entire scarf collection behind - since I accessorise almost every outfit with one, AND they're useful in winter, it would have been helpful to pack a few.

Helpful extra tip: don't forget little things like delicates bags, ladies, which will help you in the long run by extending your bra's shelf life, or local products you use a lot and can't get overseas, like eucalyptus oil, which is my go-to remedy for a blocked nose.

So, that's my packing list for Spain! Auxiliars, any things you wish you had or hadn't packed? Future auxiliars, any things you're not sure if you should or shouldn't bring?

It's Time

One of the interesting things about moving to another country is ferreting out all quirks that make their culture THEIR culture and different to everyone else's culture - what makes them them, so to speak.  Spain has a surprising number for a country that's supposedly so closely allied, linguistically at least, to the rest of Western Europe.  I'll save most of them for another time, though.  There's plenty of it here; Spain has the weirdest relationship with time I've ever seen.

To begin with, they've completely restructured their days in a fashion that makes every other country in the world look at them askance.  The day here begins at 8:15am - that's when school starts.  Government offices and services like the bank and post office open at 8:30am, and business follow suit from then until about 10am.  For a country with a reputation for late nights, they sure are up and at 'em earlier than any country I know.

The really quirky part kicks in at 2pm.  Every business closes, every government bureau shuts, and they all go home for the Spanish seista.  Wandering around Baza in the early afternoon is like being in a ghost town.  I think of it as 'the twilight zone' - the weird, dead period of time between morning and afternoon (yes, 'morning' in Spain seems to cover the period right up until early afternoon, while tarde goes from 5pm up til 9 or 10pm, and in between 'mañana' and 'tarde' is simply 'siesta').  There's absolutely no-one in the streets - that is, until 2:45pm, when the high schools let out for the day.  These kids haven't eaten since their bocadillo sandwich in their half-hour morning break, because the Spanish won't even consider eating lunch before 2pm.  The kids all hurry home and families enjoy a nice, leisurely midday meal together.

Most shops open again after lunch at 5pm.  The true running of the bulls in Spain is the sudden appearance of the entire local population as soon as siesta ends.  It's like they're released from some invisible pen somewhere and spill onto the streets, eager to spend money, greet friends, run errands, eat and drink a lot, or simply mingle with no-one and everyone in particular.  If you go for a walk around 7pm, there's more happening than the rest of the day combined.  This does have its advantages.  For those, like teachers, who work in the morning, they still have plenty of time in the afternoon to buy the groceries, pop in and pay the phone bill, or even just do a little clothes shopping (though it's not so helpful if you need to go to the post office!)  Dinner is anywhere from 8pm to midnight.  I still can't get my head around how this country can leave the lights on til 12am and still get kids out of bed earlier than every other country.  Do they pour coffee down their ears or something?

What's even more interesting is that this entire work week is built around seista, which is an old Spanish tradition not born of laziness but of the desire for a leisurely familial midday meal each day, and even though it's no longer really practical to pop home for three hours midday to eat, the custom persists.  Believe me when I say, these guys can really take their time over a meal.  These days, in a larger city, it's not too hard to find places that are open all afternoon, but in a small town like Baza, family is still important.

Saturdays and Sundays are a law unto themselves.  All the shops, though not the services, are open Saturday mornings and, especially when it's sunny, there's this lovely convivial atmosphere as you wander round town, getting brunch with friends, window-shopping or running errands.  Then at 2pm everything shuts up tight as a clam again.  No Saturday night fever round here!  Sundays are apparently a family day around here, though I can't vouch for that, because you pretty much don't see anyone on Sundays.  I go out walking or bike riding most weekends, and I have wondered on occasion if a bio-weapon has wiped out Baza and I'm the last human on earth.  No, really.  Everything's so quiet!

This relaxed familiarity around time has led to other cultural traits as well.  My yoga teacher has taken to locking the studio door when classes start in an attempt to train her students to arrive on time (the Spaniards are also terribly disorganised as well as frequently late, but that's another story).  In fact, coming home from Granada last weekend, my bus, another bus, a couple of cars and half a dozen taxis were held up for a good quarter-hour when an old woman who just missed our bus waylaid us just outside the station and sat down in the middle of the road in front of the bus when the driver refused to let her on.  Talk about local colour!

Sierra Nevada ski trip!

A few months ago, the PE teacher with whom I had the most classes mentioned that he was taking the 2ndo ESO class (Year 8) to the nearby Sierra Nevada ski range for a day trip, and I should come along (he did say he'd love to take me to Andorra with the Year 11 class for their ski trip, but that one was out of his power). On the first day back of 2016, Joaquín told me that the trip was coming up in about two weeks, so if I could pay the 40eu the following day, I was in.  My co-ordinator released me from the day's classes, I paid up and I was on the figurative bus.

After two weeks of frantically searching for borrowed  ski gear, I was up at 6am last Wednesday to dress and head to the bus station before 7am.  Two dark hours of noisy 13-year-olds later, we pulled up to the town of Pradollano, the main town of the Sierra Nevada Ski Resort. Our guide handed out lift passes, and it was onto the gondola and up the mountain.

Pradollano and the mountains

Winter wonderland!

Though we were all already kitted up, it took a while to sort out the actual equipment - helmets, boots and either snowboards or skis and poles for everyone. We were then split up into smaller groups for lessons with an instructor.

Glamorous!

Lesson 1 - how to put on your skis (harder than it sounds.) Lesson 2 - walking. Then it was gliding, limbo, jumping and stopping. Once we'd mastered that, the instructor took us to a very small incline nearby and had us ski to the bottom before stopping.  Some of us managed the stopping better than others.  Some stopped into others.  In short, skiing with teenage first-timers is hilarious.  I spent most of the day laughing at them all falling over.

Walking on skis

Next it was on a small ski ramp to the top of the learner's incline, and then straight onto a longer one that dropped us about halfway up the nearest slope.  This time Manolo, our instructor, had us ski down bit by bit, working on stopping.  When skiing, you stop by turning your toes inwards to create a wedge shape, or 'cuña' in Spanish.  I spent a lot of time yelling "Cuña!" at my students, who equally spent a lot of time skiing right on past me 'til they ran out of momentum.  Again, so long as they weren't bleeding, watching my students whizzing past going, "I don't know how to stooooooop!" was pretty funny for me.  Call it revenge for tiring Thursday afternoons trying to make them stay in their seats and stop throwing paper around the classroom.

Halfway up the slope

Me and the kids

We stopped for lunch at 2pm, after a couple more sessions skiing down the small slope.  We also worked on turning, which, again, caused problems for some...

WHOOSH. "What was tha...oh, Antonio forgot how to stop again....cuña, Antonio!...yup, he's fallen over now."
THUMP. "Who fell over this time?" "Daniel.  Again.  No, Daniel, try standing up with your skis on this time.  Hey, Manolo, once you've sorted out Antonio, Daniel needs help again!"
THUMP. "Was that...". "Yup. Antonio." "How did he manage to fall over when he wasn't even moving?..." "I have no idea."

*This dialogue is not verbatim, but is 90% accurate.  I'm sure because this happened many times...many, many times.

After a quick sandwich lunch sitting in the lovely warm, comfortable snow, we had an hour of free skiing time until we had to meet again to take the bus.  I elected to go with our PE teacher Joaquín and some of the boys in my group, since they were doing the larger slope.  What I didn't realise was that they were taking the ski lift to the top of the nearest slope...ALL the way to the top.

On the main slope

After what seemed like a VERY long time on the ski lift, about a dozen of us marshalled at the top of the slope before setting off.  We lasted about 30 metres before we had a man down. In the 10 or so minutes it took to get Fran back on his skis, the snowboarders gathered underneath the chairlift and eventually took off without us, the rest of us skiers gathered a bit further up, and all the boys promptly fell down the nearest incline as soon as we started moving again.

Waiting on my boys...

Eventually I left the students behind, since they ALL kept falling over and I couldn't help them back into their skis, so I left them to Joaquín and went it alone.  The crowning moment of my day was skiing neatly to the bottom of the slope and braking gently from 200 metres up (ok, so I hurtled down in ever-increasing speed and terror until I ran out of momentum at the bottom, but hey, progress).  This was followed by a painful slog back to the hire centre to get out of those awful ski boots, and a two-hour bus ride home with an incredibly noisy, hyped-up bunch of kids.  How they had that much energy after the day we'd had I will never understand, but then that's niños for you.

Second ski lift from the right - top to bottom!

Bucket list #23: learn to ski - check!

The Slave of Duty

I've been saying from the beginning that Baza reminds me of my own small town - a lovely, charming, healthy place to grow up - but it's a stifling place for young people to live, with little higher education, opportunities or excitement for those longing for a taste of the world.  This is hardly more evident than in languages.

I moved to Spain to learn Spanish, to immerse myself in the language so completely that I'd be oozing castellano out of my ears.  Well, sleepy, rural, monolingual Baza is the perfect place for me to fill my aural cavities with stuff that would bewilder an ENT, but for those trying to go the other way, Baza is a vast, hopeless wasteland.

Despite the number of British retirees kicking around in this part of the world, hoping for some sunny peace and quiet to finish out their days, Baza is very much a one-language town.  While, as in Australia, most of the more common languages can be found and used in the big cities, once you hit the countryside your chances of finding a second language start to plummet, and the young English-learners of Baza are a tad desperate.  My first few weeks in Baza were about finding ways to politely tell people that no, they couldn't book one of my private English classes because I wasn't running any private English classes.  This threw more than a few people for six.  In a town where native English speakers pretty much consist of the overseas language assistants (and those reclusive retirees), classes with us are in high demand.  I discovered during my first week at flamenco class that my teacher was the woman who'd sent a message via my high school that she wanted to host the school's language assistant, in exchange for said assistant (me) speaking English to her two girls at home.

While I quickly nixed that idea (and my coordinator promptly 'forgot' to ask me until I'd 'already' found my own apartment), she wasn't the only one.  Another teacher approached me on first meeting to ask about setting up an English-language play session with her under-10 daughter and her friends, and didn't seem to believe me when I said that sorry, I wasn't offering classes.  I was even chased down the street one night after leaving a shop because the shop girl wanted to know if I'd help her practise English every week.  After a very long chat in Spanish, during which she explained that she's undertaking post-secondary studies through a local high school and attending a private language school in the afternoons, I had to tell her that I've in fact come to Spain to learn Spanish, not to help all of Spain learn English.

In amongst all her pleading, though, she raised a really good point.  There are a lot of people in this town that really, genuinely want to learn English - far more than you'd find wanting to learn a second language in Australia - and almost all of them have no opportunity to practise with a fluent speaker, let alone a native speaker.  Even the English-speaking teachers in the bilingual program at my school don't speak English in class nearly as much as they speak Spanish.  Granted, the kids often need Spanish translations to help them follow the English explanations, but they get little enough English as it is.  I often represent the biggest English-language influence in these kids' lives, and for some of them it's all of half an hour a week.

So it leaves me feeling more and more guilty, every time I say no to someone and leave them to founder through their English studies at home. As one of Baza's only English speakers, I feel almost duty-bound to offer English classes not because I want to, but because so many people around here need them and they just don't have any other options.  It seems kind of hard to justify my efforts for one person to learn Spanish - me - when I could be helping 20 or 30 other people to learn English!  The problem is, I've paid $2,000 in the form of a return plane ticket in order to learn Spanish, and €8/hour for English classes can't even hold a candle to that.  Of course, guilt is so nobly above such mercenary considerations and nags at me all the same.

In fact, I had this entire conversation with one of the women in my flamenco class a while ago.  What's most remarkable is while I completely understand the perspective of all the locals here who are pestering me for lessons, it appears that not one of them can see my point of view!  Even when I point out that I work at a school speaking English to the kids all day long and don't want to trot off to even more classes in English every afternoon, everyone seems to think I'm making a funny.  Heaven forbid that I moved 16,000 kilometres around the world to live in a country that speaks the tongue I want to speak day in and day out - oh no, I must have flown for a over a day and a half just to spend all my time speaking to them in a language I can find back home!  Of course, that makes such good sense - at least, it does to them!

¡Feliz Navidad!

Christmas in Spain has been quite the experience, and I've had to wait until mid-January to write this post, because that's how long Christmas takes in Spain. Let me give you the run-down...

Firstly, Baza got all dressed up for Christmas.  All the streets had giant fairy light murals hanging over them, and Plaza Mayor was awash with lights.  It was fun taking walks just to see all the lights around town.

I spent Christmas Day at home in my apartment in Baza, with my family on Skype doing trivia quizzes and opening presents.  I spent most of Christmas Eve cooking, so for Christmas lunch I put on a pretty dress and had a lovely homemade gluten-free, lactose-free spinach and capsicum lasagne, followed by a lactose-free apple crumble.  This was followed by three days of near-comatose lounging.  So that I didn't spend the whole holiday season alone, I headed to Seville on New Year's to visit a colleague from school (but that's a separate post).

Thing is, December 25th is not the big deal here in Spain.  They're less fussed about the birth of baby Jesus, and more fussed about when the Three Wise Men rocked up to celebrate.  In Spain it's all about the 12th Day of Christmas, January 5th - better known as Los Reyes Magos.  It's marked by a parade called La Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos, when the Three Kings arrive to give presents to baby Jesus and any stray children who might be hanging around...by which I mean every child under 10 in town.

I was advised by one colleague to go to Granada to see their much bigger, better cabalgata, but I decided I'd rather stay home in Baza and see whatever the local celebration looked like.  I did not regret it.  Overlooking the steady rain which gradually drenched the parade (and all attendees), it was a much bigger, louder, more colourful and celebratory event than I'd expected.  Because of the circuitous route I actually got to see the whole parade twice - characters in costume, two bands, floats featuring popular movie characters, a dance troupe, and finally the three throned floats carrying the Three Kings into Baza, everyone throwing buckets of lollies to the crowd the whole time.

Mary Poppins and her chimneysweeps!

Donald Duck here is Blanca, one of my students

The parade eventually made its way to Plaza Mayor, where a stage had been set up with three canopied thrones, though by the time the parade arrived the thrones had been hidden from the rain.

The kings instead appeared on the balcony of the archaeology museum, and after Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior had introduced themselves and blessed the town of Baza, the sky suddenly exploded with fireworks right overhead in Plaza Mayor.  The square was illuminated by flares coming off the balcony, and for a few minutes the whole of Baza was transfixed in a show of light.  Of course, about five minutes later the soaking rain was enough to send me running home, so I never did get to find out if the kings ventured out to meet the children or not.  Still, a fascinating and lovely tradition to add to the yearbooks!