PAGAN SPAIN

sometimes the smoke turns out to have been coming from a chestnut roaster’s cart, which was the case the other night with the smoke cloud that was hovering below the tenting at the entrance to the pedestrian shopping promenade that begins at the zara store nearest el corte ingles. but sometimes the smoke isn’t floating the smell of charred chestnuts (which don’t seem to have a season here), but instead is carrying the unmistakable fragrance of frankincense, which was the case with the cloud that led me onto the crowd that filled the one narrow intersection on calle regina between the plaza mayor and the church of san juan de palma. and the smoke cloud was just a prelude to the chanting and the clanging of the baubles on top of the staffs that her attendants pounded against the ground to announce the resumption of the virgin’s procession through the intersection atop her seriously ornately gilded palanquin. i can’t say to which church the image belonged, but, probably, neither could most of the other people who had stumbled across the procession and were doing their best to snap photos of the image as she moved through the smoke. and for the smoke, it was difficult to tell if our lady of last night was decorated, under her outsized and resplendent crown, with the crystalline tears that appear on the faces of the virgins in the photographs advertising special viewings or the faded ones that decorate walls of the older cervecerias (or of any older retail establishment for that matter). the virgin passed, and the crowd closed around her attendants behind her. once before, i’d happened upon the carrying of the virgin de la esperanza (the second most celebrated in the city after the virgin de la macarena) back into the santa ana church in triana as a saturday night was turning into an early sunday morning. i’d no better idea of what feast (or whatever other event) she’d been brought out to celebrate that night than i did in regards to the virgin whose path i crossed on my way up calle regina towards home. but no bother. those things are better left to the krewes of parishioners who enjoy the image’s patronage. and they likely prefer it that way -- like those bearers of the portable shinto shrines that carry whichever of those deities through the crowds during festivals in japan -- to be the sole protectors of the gallant and dazzling rites that every so often take their virgin to the streets. i didn’t buy that copy of richard wright’s pagan spain when it was available at powell’s because it had been so severely marked up, and i never found another one. but i think i’ve gotten the gist of it by showing up. and it’s nice to be home.