The Virgin of El Roc

The medieval devotion to the Virgin of the Dew in southern Spain has given rise to a Pentecost pilgrimage-festival, when a million people arrive to ?see the Virgin? in the streets of El Roc?o. The Tablet?s assistant editor was with them this year.

A GHOST town at the edge of the Andalusian marshes the rest of the year, with a few hundred people and a scattering of mules, at Pentecost the population of El Roc?o in Spain soars to more than a million. People flock in to catch the eyes of the Virgin of the Dew as she is processed through the streets in the early hours of the Monday after Whit Sunday. It is a remarkable spectacle. It is Europe?s Kumbh Mela.

And getting there is a riot ? especially when the sun soars into the mid-forties centigrade. Hottest Roc?o in a hundred years! screamed the newspapers the morning I left with 500 pilgrims from El Salvador church in Seville. It was a rare privilege to go with them. Foreigners seldom break into what is a private, local festival.

Local maybe, but vast. In the days before Whit Sunday, a hundred such brotherhoods ? many taking thousands of pilgrims ? leave towns and villages around Seville for the marshes of the River Guadalquivir, where, in the time of the Catholic kings, the Virgin of the Dew appeared to a hunter. Each brotherhood takes its banner image of the Virgin, the ?sinless one?, in an elaborate solid-silver cart pulled by oxen. The pilgrims accompany her on horses, in mule-drawn traps, in ox-drawn cloth wagons done up with flowers, in Land Rovers, or on foot.

The road to Roc?o is one long party, with formidable levels of drinking and very little sleep. It is criticised for this (a shameful excuse for pleasure and fiesta ? which do not need excuses, sniffs a columnist in the Madrid daily El Mundo) as well as for its expense. Back in the 1950s El Roc?o was a simpler affair, walked by agricultural labourers for whom it was also their annual break from the fields. Now the village has become a rural theme park with soaring property prices, and the pilgrimage there is costly and elaborate.

When he was first appointed, the current Archbishop of Seville, a son of the Second Vatican Council from the north of Spain, wanted little to do with El Roc?o. But these days Archbishop Carlos Amigo Vallejo attempts instead to co-opt Seville?s massive Marian industry. At the packed pilgrims? Mass on the Thursday before Pentecost, I noticed he was careful to call it a peregrinaci?n, not a romer?a ? the latter being the Andalusian term for a pilgrimage-cum-fiesta, named from the rosemary herb which is abundant in the region. Archbishop Amigo also told us to carry Christ?s words in our hearts. Without faith, he warned, the camino is just an excursion.

Out in the church plaza in Seville there is a roar of firecrackers, the sweet tune of a pipe, a drum roll, and we are off. The men on horses are togged up in grey sombreros and waistcoats over striped trousers; their women are gorgeous in bright polka-dot dresses and lace. I meet up with my hosts, Pepe and his family, who are traditional rocieros: He always went as a child, and here are his sons on horseback, their girlfriends riding sidesaddle. T?o Pepe ? as I silently nick- name him in tribute to his prodigious consumption of manzanilla ? is a businessman with a weekend house in El Roc?o, a number of horses and mules, and a Land-Rover pulling a covered trailer where we sit drinking our way out of Seville. The Virgin sets the pace, with the cattleman walking just ahead of her oxen, thwacking their noses with a stick. As the heat rises, taking no prisoners, the stops become more frequent and the drinking begins apace; there is endless opportunity to dance by the side of the road, or thrum sevillanas from inside a mule-drawn trap. Andalusians are remorselessly extrovert. The laughter, drinking, gossip dancing, singing and guitar-playing are unceasing, even at our first-night stop which we reach well past midnight. With Pepe?s sons I spend the remaining night hours keeping time with hand-claps to gypsy songs, watching bodies swivel in the light of fires.

What are people?s motives? As James Joyce might equally have said of El Roc?o, here comes everybody. Walking with their hands on the Virgin?s cart the next day are three pilgrims murmuring prayers, keeping a promise not to let go of her until the village (they do, of course, at night). Among them is Luis, a wizened old man with unsteady legs whose smile cracks his face in two. He hasn?t failed the Virgin for longer than anyone here ? including he ? can remember. In the best pilgrim tradition, he depends on others for drinks and tapas, and never lacks for either. Or there is Roc?o (a popular woman?s name in Andalusia), a pretty fair-haired girl travelling in a carreta, one of those lovely whitewashed ox-drawn wagons with wheels the height of a man. She is 22, a law student, and that rare thing, a Massgoer with a strong devotion to her famous patron. As we pass a field of sunflowers into a eucalyptus wood, she gives her view that yes, this is a pilgrimage, even if half the people here don?t have religious motives.

Juan Tonorio S?nchez, whom I meet resting from the heat under a cane bush, is a member of the brotherhood, and a humanist for whom the devotion has no importance. El Roc?o, he explains, is about solidarity and maintaining important traditions; even without the Virgin, he would still come. Later I put Juan?s view to T?o Pepe, who is outraged. You think I would put up with all this discomfort if it weren?t for the Virgin? he snorted, pouring a gin. But I?m not sure. Like most of the others in traps and on horses, T?o Pepe is a rociero rather than a pilgrim. They spend their year saving for this, preparing for this. El Roc?o runs in their blood. The Virgin is as much a part of that as the horses and the fiesta ? but perhaps not more so.

AS a first-timer, I get baptised with a hatful of water in the river Quema, Roc?o?s Jordan and our halfway mark. Pilgrims, horses, mules, oxen, guitar-players, even the Virgin?s heavy cart ? we all stand in the river up to our knees and the men wave our hats. Long live the Virgin of the Roc?o! Long live the Mother of God! Long live the White Dove! A rosary, then a salve: Save me, Roc?o, save me. Mediating Mother, Queen of the Marshes, save me. Only now do I get to feel the pilgrim thing: a lowered guard and open heart, the knowledge that these are my brothers and sisters, a sense of God?s grandeur aflame in an eternal present. They call it the Roc?o magic. I realise now how the exuberance gets misinterpreted. The Virgin and the guitars, manzanilla and ice, sun and dust, friends and animals ? it?s all of life, and of God.

Steering T?o Pepe?s trap, Pedro describes his anger at what they?ve done to the Virgin, setting her up like that inside a basilica when she used to live in a hermitage, because she is one of them ? a simple virgin who came to them in the marshes. We talk from behind handkerchiefs tied over our mouths to keep out the fine dust that makes the pilgrims seem ethereal. In between whispered commands to Manuela the mule, whose ears swivel in response like radars, Pedro tells me stories: how his sister?s baby was going to be stillborn, and how he came to see the Virgin, and how two months later a healthy baby was born, though doctors said it couldn?t happen. That?s the power the Virgin has.

As we approach the village, the riders ? red-faced beneath their elegant layers ? show signs of passing out in the afternoon heat. But it?s the Virgin?s oxen that take it the hardest. (Oxen in two other brotherhoods died on the way, I learned later.) The cattlemen pour mineral water over the oxen?s snouts, let them rest a while, and a few of us push the Virgin?s cart from behind. Over on the marshes are flamingoes strutting in the water, and wild ponies grazing. After a last salve and Rosary at an old bridge that marks the official entrance to the village, we tread into El Roc?o dreaming of showers. In the village, I rub my eyes. El Roc?o is laid out in grids of dust streets filled with horses and traps, and hundreds of people in traditional dress. It is a time-warp, a film-set for Westerns.

We make the basilica by four and present ourselves to the Virgin of Roc?o gleaming behind a grille, to whom we shout our final vivas. The Virgin has already been brought down and stripped of her flowers in preparation for the annual exeat. She spooks me, a little. It?s her pallid face, maybe; or the tiny toy Jesus suspended in her midriff; or the fact that everything woman about her is lost behind the jewelled cape. Or maybe it is her eyes and smile, which, Mona Lisa-like, can be anything you want them to be. Off to the right a priest sits behind bars, thumbing a rosary. People pass Roc?o figurines and keyrings through the bars to a boy, who rolls them on a stole. A man strumming a guitar sings to the Virgin, sweat pouring off him, then leaves.

Over the weekend more brotherhoods arrived, and the village continued to fill. The fiesta continued apace, as did the salves, the firecrackers and drums. I snatched sleep when I could ? in between the two-hour Pentecost Mass and the Rosary that began at midnight. In the early hours of Monday, the crowds around the basilica swelled, and the tension grew. Finally, at half past three a.m., members of the Mother Brotherhood of Almonte ? the village closest to El Roc?o ? stormed the railings. Lifting the one-ton caged Virgin out of the basilica into the street, for the next nine hours they steered her to each of the brotherhoods through a sea of people. The Virgin rose and fell like a storm-tossed ship. The crowd groaned, gasped, fell silent, then roared with approval. She took it all in her stride.

This encounter with the Virgin ? directly, in the street ? is what many people come for. It is not conventionally contemplative or prayerful, and if you get too close to the Virgin without asking, you get thumped. And yet I see people in tears. There is an old sevillana that runs: Clinging to your bars, Roc?o / I pray to you; / Why do I need cathedrals / If I pray to you crying? T?o Pepe and his family next day leave for the return journey ? which everyone says is richer, purer, more peaceful than the coming. When I come to say goodbye to Pedro, he wants to know if I saw the Virgin. Sure, I say, I got close enough to see her eyes. So, he says, now do you understand? I?m not sure I do; for an English child of Vatican II, this devotion is not easy to grasp. It?s as if, I venture, she?s come to visit us. As if she?s chosen us. Pedro is delighted, and claps his hands. That?s it, hombre, he laughs. That?s how our Virgin is.