Today's service of the Word was scheduled for eleven o'clock, a simple affair, starting with the Song of the Suffering Servant from Isaiah, then the dialogue St John Passion read from Gethsemane to the condemnation of Jesus, and followed by Stations of the Cross. The text I was given for the Stations didn't read aloud as well as I thought it would and needed ad lib adaptation. I;d have done better to have chosen something from my own web library of texts, and came away feeling rather unsatisfied. Plus there were just six adults and two children present, again, due to the difficulties of access on a day of few public transport services and much traffic disruption.
After lunch and a siesta, I walked to the Cathedral and joined in their Good Friday Passion Liturgy at five, presided over by the Bishop and Cathedral Canons, plus three robed Deacons for the reading of St John's Passion and the solemn intercessions. Every seat was taken and I guess there were five to eight hundred people present. There was one cross to venerate, and the queue promised to last as long as the service had done so far, so I negotiated my way out through the crowd, with the aim of meeting up with Clare who'd promised to follow me later into the Old Town.
In fact, she texted me from a vantage point above the road tunnel where she was standing to watch the passage of La Malagueta barrio's cofradia del Descendimiento along Avenida Cervantes into town. The sound of drums and then the band starting up had alerted her to its departure up in the apartment, and she found her vantage point just in time to hear a saeta being sung from a balcony above the bar whose terrace overlooks the street where the procession had stopped.
The saeta is a devotional lament or praise song of Andalucian culture. They happen whenever there is a procession. Clare was most fortunate. Despite being out and about a lot this week, I've not been so lucky, though I did hear one in Rincon de la Victoria last summer during the procession for Our Lady of Victories patronal fiesta.
After a few phone calls and text messages, we achieved a rendezvous outside the Ajuntamiento building where the Alcalde and his chief officers stood outside on the steps paying homage as the procession passed by on Avenida Cervantes. So far Clare had seen Our Lady's procession at the back, but when she caught up with me the Descendimiento trona was just level with me. It depicts the dead Jesus being lowered from the cross into the arms of his mother and the other Marys by two men using long linen sheets. A very powerful image indeed.
We left the procession once at had passed us by and went together to the Cathedral, to be honest in the vain hope of getting access to a toilet. A modest crowd gathering in the churchyard which joins the Cathedral and a substantial sixteenth century building called El Sagrario. Up until this time I had been quite unaware that it was a church. I believed it to be a big sacristy or treasury kind of building. Only later did I learn this is the Parish Church of the barrio in which the Cathedral is set, and that it was one of the elite group of four established immediately after the reconquista in 1495.
As we arrived a procession was forming from El Sagrario stretching across to a large side entrance to the Cathedral, which wasn't the main north porch door. After a while a modest simple trona emerged from El Sagrario bearing a crucifix laid down, but at a slightly raised angle. The hombres de trona wore suits, though other Nazarenos in the procession were robed in black. The crucifix was a very fine piece of 17th century sculpture by Jerónimo Gómez de Hermosilla. What immediately struck the eye was the absence in the image of the feet and most of one leg. It was evident that this damaged image was accorded the utmost respect, but at this moment we had no idea why.
Later we learned it was taken into the Cathedral to be carried about during the Stations of the Cross, and that it would not be paraded out in the Old Town, as it had been occasionally before. This crucifix had been vandalised during an early republican insurrection in Malaga in July 1936, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Two years later it became the devotional focus of Nationalist military amputees and a patriotic cofradia developed around it. Fast forward a couple of generations and a reconciling effort was being encouraged by church authorities to make it a focus for both Republican and Nationalist amputees, and the cofradia acquired a more civilian ethos, calling for suits rather than uniforms.
There were still questions around this procession going public however, due to its origins in military propaganda. Over recent decades movement has been restricted to crossing the Parish churchyard. The story isn't over yet, however. Consensus has grown that the story of Cristo Mutilado should be taken to closure by its repair and restoration to its original form, as part of the long slow process of reconciliation post-Civil War, whose wounds are less spoken of but often still unhealed in Spain. It's an amazing story of enduring religious institutional patience in an effort to bring good out of ill, to the benefit of all who were victims of violence. There are many other such examples at different fault lines in the history of war torn twentieth century Europe. Politicians easily forget when it suits them, but the church remembers, and thinks in centuries.
After this encounter, we walked back to the apartment for supper, then I made my way back into the Old Town as the sun was setting, for the last act in the week of processional dramas.
First I encountered the procession of Nuestra Senora de la Piedad, and then that of Santo Sepulchro. An image of Jesus now recumbent in death on a funeral bier, accompanied by Nazarenos in black, and slow solemn music of mounding from the accompanying bands, with the crowds quiet, subdued, no longer exuberant or applauding. This is the image which is to be found normally on the retable behind the altar in the stark simplicity of the former Cistercian convent of Sta Ana not far from the Cathedral. I followed it for a while past Plaza de la Merced until it turned into a side street. Ahead on a junction of Los Alamos, another crowd was gathered. Another image of the Descendimiento had not long passed by. I saw it later, depicting the dead Jesus being wrapped in a shroud ready for burial.
The crowd hadn't dispersed however, as another procession was winding its way down the hill from Lagunillas, Nazarenos robed entirely in black and carrying lit candles, a slow moving trickle of light in the encroaching darkness of the street. This was the cofradia of the Third Order of the Servants of Mary, making its procession with the final processional image of Our Lady, standing on her own in mourning black, having laid Jesus to rest. This procession wan't due to return to base at St Philip Neri Parish Church until three in the morning.
It was gone eleven o'clock, so I headed for the Alameda Principal on my way back to the apartment. When I was here for Semana Santa four years ago, most of my time was spent on the Alameda or Larios. This year I've not often visited, spending more time out with the free moving crowds in the streets of the Old Town. Although late, there were crowds of people wandering in the Alameda and still seated in the stands. Here I saw the passage of yet another Descendimento image, perhaps the most familiar one of all in Western art, known as the Pieta - Mary at the foot of the cross cradling the dead Jesus in her arms.
On my way back to the apartment, appearing from Calle Cister was the trona of the Descendimiento from La Malagueta barrio, on the last leg of its eight hour journey through the streets of the Old Town. A very satisfying way to end the day and conclude my project of witness to the living tradition and culture of religious processions here in Malaga. Over the previous six days I saw perhaps half of all the week's processions, and realise how much more there is to be seen. It's all been so brilliantly organised and supported by many thousands of committed people, no matter how great or small their personal faith may be. I feel sure Malaga is not only a more prosperous place as a result but also a more kindly, humane decent and welcoming a place to be.
So glad I could be here for this. And relieved that Holy Saturday is a quiet day of reflection before the night time Easter Vigil. You can find my photos here.
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