Historia.

The third characteristic of this festival was the performance of centuries-old dances, although called into question by some moralists who criticised certain movements, garments and attitudes of the male, female and cross-dressed dancers (Garrido Atienza, 1889:90). Each year, the city councils entrusted two aldermen with the task of engaging dances (sword or stick dances, saraos, sarabandes, Turkish or gypsy dances, bell dances) for the procession. In the 17th century, the city of Jaen engaged the services of gypsy dancers, several pairs of acrobats, dancers and minstrels to enliven the festival. From year to year there would be between ten and fifteen persons of this ethnic group, duly dressed in accordance with their custom: the women wearing their best, bejewelled, shod and dressed in the gypsy style, with their farthingales, and the men, dancing, leaping and playing rattles, tambourines and guitars. The town council’s interest in these dances was so great that on occasions they acted as guarantor for the gypsies to release them from prison, so that they could dance in the procession (Gómez Martínez 1995:164; López Molina, 2000:737). Dancing was present in the Corpus Christi processions until the second half of the 18th century, when it was forbidden by king Carlos III at the request of certain erudite intellectuals and prelates and of the Council of Castile itself, with the opposition of the civil and ecclesiastical chapters (Matute,1887:III-131). Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that legislation does not mean immediate implementation, as the common people, under the guidance of no small number of clergymen who lived in direct contact with them and who shared many of their beliefs and feelings, continued to practice it long after (Cortés Peña, 1989:43). Currently, as the final vestige of the ancient dances, there only remains the “Seises”, a refined dance performed by the choirboys of the cathedral of Seville.

But the festival was not only this, but the representation of the stratified society that passed by in procession. The entire social body of the city was present, as we have mentioned, in strict hierarchical order, represented by the corporations in their civil and ecclesiastical chapters, the parish priests, the religious orders, the brotherhoods of glory and penitence, including the sacramental brotherhoods, the guilds in representation of the working world, the universities and schools, and of course the religious, civil, military, judicial, university and other authorities. In addition, those spiritual beings directly connected with the protection of the city: patron saints, devotional images and relics. These made up a real treasure due to the magical power -as was believed- that emanated from these objects, and which granted the institution possessing them a spiritual power that was consistent with the temporal power, expressed in income and tithes. The city, represented by its harmoniously and hierarchically established corporations, was placed under the supreme power of the monstrance and was embraced in an internal circle of excellence marked by the official route of the procession. The procession passed, and still passes, along the main streets and squares where the centres of power were situated, carpeted with sedge, decorated with drapes, triumphal arches, luminaires and other elements that contributed to highlighting the festival.

The presence of the guilds and trades was a substantial part of the festival, as it was of society. They played an active part in the procession with their presence, and also with dances and merry-making that contributed to the festive tone of the Eucharistic procession. An example may be found in this text, referring to Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cadiz) in 1552, a medium-sized city, the capital of the estates of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, according to the chapter acts:

The order of the trades in the procession on the day of Corpus Xpti shall be as follows: first, the reapers, with the Tarasque - behind them, the builders, with sword dances - then behind these, the vegetable growers, with sword dances - then the blacksmiths - then the weavers - then the cartwrights, with the dance of the reapers - then the potters and stonemasons - then painters - then the esparto sandalmakers - then the cobblers - then the barbers - then the spice merchants - then the silk merchants and behind these the Moslem converts - then the innkeepers, with sword dances - then the millers - then the coopers - then the men of the sea with the cart - then the carpenters - then the tailors - then the armourers - the Ark of the Blessed Sacrament - and all the merchants, with their candles alight. And all the skilled craftsmen shall carry candles, in the company of their trades, in front of the Blessed Sacrament”(Barbadillo, 1947:300).

This festive, and at the same time recreational, participation was preceded by a popular festival or soirée, which took place the day before. This fact strengthened the dual recreational-religious composition of the festival, which the people of Andalusia have preserved until the present. In Seville, the evening of the Corpus was celebrated at nightfall in the vicinity of the cathedral steps, where the many people present browsed around the decorations and drapes of damask and other fabrics of the houses and public buildings on the route, and amused themselves buying gifts and titbits from the numerous stalls selling nougat, hazelnuts, dolls, sweetmeats and buns that were set up along the route. Currently, this day before represents a tradition that the people of Seville hold close to their hearts; they walk along the route, visiting the altars installed by the institutions and the shop windows that the traders have decorated with Eucharistic motifs; the monstrance, ears of corn and bunches of grapes, along with a number of small images.

This festive, and at the same time recreational, participation was preceded by a popular festival or soirée, which took place the day before. This fact strengthened the dual recreational-religious composition of the festival, which the people of Andalusia have preserved until the present. In Seville, the evening of the Corpus was celebrated at nightfall in the vicinity of the cathedral steps, where the many people present browsed around the decorations and drapes of damask and other fabrics of the houses and public buildings on the route, and amused themselves buying gifts and titbits from the numerous stalls selling nougat, hazelnuts, dolls, sweetmeats and buns that were set up along the route. Currently, this day before represents a tradition that the people of Seville hold close to their hearts; they walk along the route, visiting the altars installed by the institutions and the shop windows that the traders have decorated with Eucharistic motifs; the monstrance, ears of corn and bunches of grapes, along with a number of small images.

Nowadays, the festival has lost the popular character it had in the past. The participation of the townspeople is now limited to that of mere spectators of a procession that operates as a showcase for many who, were it not in this fashion, would not play a representative role in the city at any time of the year. A common factor in the loss of the central role of the festival of past times is the acceptance by the Church, within the framework of the Concordat and of the negotiations between the Spanish government and the Conference of Bishops, of the transfer of the feast to the following Sunday, except in those few towns where, due to its local significance, it continues to be held on the Thursday, declared a local holiday by the municipal authorities. The saying “There are three days in the year that shine brighter than the sun: Maundy Thursday, Corpus Christi, and Ascension Day”, passed down by word of mouth over the centuries, has ceased to be real. Likewise, the sedge that used to cover the ground and lend it its fragrance is now sparse or non-existent, and the same is true regarding the street decorations and the altars. On the other hand, the people flock away from the cities in search of the beaches and the mountains, taking advantage of the lateness of the summer.

Doubtless, it still constitutes a great spectacle in the places where it is celebrated, and it still represents, although vaguely, the symbiosis between the church and civil society, typical of the Old Regime. Naturally, this celebration is more attractive in the cities than in the towns, as the former provide all the above ingredients with greater excellence, luxury and variety, achieving a colourful spectacle in which the clergy, with their eye-catching habits and adornments, and all the authorities in general, display the best of their full-dress uniforms and medals; the presence of the army, which used to line the entire route, has diminished or disappeared over the last years; all in all, an attractive, bright, colourful spectacle that contributes to endow the procession with splendour.

In Andalusia it had particular expansion and brilliance in the large episcopal cities, such as Seville, Cadiz, Cordoba and Malaga, and in Granada it became the principal festival of the year. In the first of these, the morning procession follows the celebration of the canonical hours and the pontifical mass in the retrochoir. After the mass, the “seises” dance, dressed in red and gold, before the Monstrance, the Archbishop and the City. At the end of the last dance, the mayor continues with the tradition of placing a gold doubloon in the hat of one of them. The cortège is formed by fraternities and brotherhoods, representations, secular and regular clergy and the ecclesiastical Chapter. The long retinue is interspersed by images on floats, which summarise the ecclesiastical tradition of Seville: St. Justa and St. Rufina, St. Leandro, St. Isidro, St. Fernando, the Immaculate Conception, the Baby Jesus and the small monstrance-reliquary of the Holy Thorn. At about half past nine in the morning, the large monstrance, bearing the Blessed Sacrament, leaves; a work by Juan de Arphe in the Plateresque style, with four decreasing bodies in a circular plan. The “seises” dance during the eight days following the feast, or octave, before the holy Sacrament in the cathedral.

Cadiz has its Corpus procession in the morning, which tours several streets and reaches the square of San Juan de Dios, which is decorated with awnings and flowers. The floats of the patron saints of Cadiz, St. Servandus and St. Germanus, and that of the Virgin of the Rosary, also patron saint of the city, appear in the procession. Until the beginning of the century, the custom was that the ships anchored in the harbour would lend their sails to act as awnings for the streets on the route of the procession; another lost tradition was that the Consular Corps would join the procession, dressed in full regalia, a circumstance that greatly enhanced the celebration.

The Corpus in Granada is that which retains the most ancient features; in this city the festival has maintained elements such as the Tarasque and the giants and big-headed figures, and the struggle between popular culture and the elite reached a stalemate, crystallising into the type of festival established in 1833, which included a livestock market and certain ironic-burlesque elements called “carocas”. There are two processions, one in the morning, that of the festival of Corpus Christi, which is led by the Tarasque, giants and big-headed figures, groups of pages, the coat of arms of the city, large chests and other picturesque objects. The second procession sets out in the evening of the octave day, and does not have these folkloric features. On the day before the Corpus festival, the “publication” or “Parade around the City” still travels through the city, led by the Tarasque and the giants and big-headed figures. According to tradition, the processional monstrance was donated by Queen Isabel the Catholic monarch, and forms a hexagonal shrine. Throughout the week, the “carocas” or humorous poems and drawings, derived from others of a religious style, remain displayed in the Bibarambla square. Coinciding with the sacramental festival, a fair is held; this started in the 19th century as a livestock market, and now follows the pattern of so many other fairs in Andalusia: private marquees, horsemen, etc., also known as the “Seville model” due to the renown of the April Fair of that city.

The same has happened in smaller towns, such as Casabermeja in Malaga, Marchena and Carrión de los Céspedes in Seville, Villacarrillo and Torreperogil in Jaen, and in the towns in the hills of Cadiz: Zahara, El Gastor and Algodonales, in towns in the hills of Huelva, and also in the province of Cordoba, where they carpet the streets with coloured sawdust, Granada and Almeria. From among these, we are going to describe the festival of Zahara de la Sierra, a small town set in the beautiful landscape of the hills of Cadiz, and which has celebrated this feast for over five hundred years. This town, definitively reconquered from the Moors of Granada in 1483 by don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, marquis of Cadiz, was the feudal seat of the Arcos family until their disappearance. The preparations for the festival start several days before, when the men, previously on their own initiative and more recently organised by the town council, travelled sometimes great distances to collect the branches, the sedge and the aromatic herbs with which they decorate the façades and roadways of the streets of the processional route. The early hours of the Sunday see the beginning of the operation of positioning the branch bundles on the façades and external walls of the houses, as high as the branches can reach. Subsequently, the sedge is spread over the square and the three streets of the route, so thickly that the ground cannot be seen. At about midday, High Mass is held in the parish church, concelebrated by the priest and previous parish priests. Formerly, and until only a few years ago, it was held on the steps that descend to the square, using part of the altar of repose or “monument” previously erected within the church on Maundy Thursday as an altar and reredos.

Once the Mass is over, the procession commences, led by the band; next come the children who have received their first communion, the silver Eucharist banner, the pallium, carried by men closely linked to the church, the monstrance, carried by the priest with the aid of the verger and the invited priests, and the congregation. Most of those present do not join the procession, but watch from a distance. The route, a real temporary garden, includes the three main streets, where until recently the most influential families lived. When the procession concludes, the profane festival commences, which takes place in the municipal marquee erected in the square and in the main street. The bars fill with people, the many visitors walk through the town and then depart, leaving only the locals, their relatives from afar and their guests. On these days, the locals are visited by family members whom they take in, and some organise a party, inviting outsiders with whom they maintain business relationships, ties of dependence or friendship. The music group will play in the marquee from the evening until the early hours. The festival continues the following day, with more dancing in the marquee, while people take part in recreational activities. Until only a few decades ago, the children used to play with the sedge, making piles which they defended as juvenile war booty, armed with clubs made from the same material. (Bru Madroñal, 1997 and 1999).

At the close of the Middle Ages and in the Modern Age, Corpus was a festival that symbolised the conception of the world at all its levels, distinguishing the different levels and making them present by means of certain symbols. There was no dichotomy between the religious and the profane, and for that reason they blended, but did not oppose each other; the sacred came out of the temples and sacralised the public spaces in a spectacle that placed the spectator at the centre of the action (Lleó, 1975:103). The Council of Trent would respect the medieval viewpoint of the world, maintaining the harmony between the mundane and the divine, and in particular would support the Corpus procession; the Baroque period would even promote certain expressions; Bourbon rationalism would give rise to a distancing between the people and the festival which would convert the latter into a ceremony for the exaltation of the power of the church and of the State.

The feast of Corpus Christi, arising from a specific experience that a papal decision attempted to make ecumenical, has never been fully accepted by ordinary believers regarding its theological and symbolic content and its iconographic expression: the Host, the ears of corn and the bunches of grapes. The sacramental mystery of transubstantiation involved therewith is difficult for the common people to understand and even more difficult for them to identify with; for that reason it has not aroused passionate devotional feelings. In addition, it should be mentioned that the Eucharist, save a few exceptions among the clergy or persons influenced by mysticism, has not been attributed the capability to work miracles, this constituting unmistakeable proof of the lack of popular devotion. With no miracles, there’s no religion, and even less popular religion. On the other hand, as has become evident, since the 18th century it has been a fundamentally ecclesiastical celebration, accommodating the established powers: ecclesiastical, military and civilian.

In spite of this, the ecclesiastical hierarchy continues to hold tight to principles that deny the facts, as revealed by the reference by pope John Paul II in his discourse to the bishops of the ecclesiastical provinces of Seville and Granada on the occasion of their ad limina visit, referring to the religiosity of the people of Andalusia: “In particular, you must encourage and channel the three particular devotions that have been for centuries, and still are, an object of predilection of the popular religiosity of your people. I refer to the devotion to Jesus Christ in the mystery of his passion and in the Eucharistic Sacrament, likewise the devotion to his Blessed mother in the mysteries of sorrow, joy and glory” (Reported by Amigo Vallejo and Gómez, 2000: 17-18). This statement does not correspond to the sociological reality: the consecrated host in the monstrance is not worshipped at all by the faithful in general; the sacramental fraternities have all but disappeared or have been absorbed by those of penitence, and in all cases, are in the hands of people that are close to the Church. The ecclesiastical and civil institutional support, and the support of the artistic heritage and the elaborate ritual have done little to win over the people. Currently, these do not identify with Jesus in the Sacrament, but with the images of the virgin Mary in some of their personifications, and in a statistical second place, with the figures of Christ and the penitents whose figurative representations incite the devotion of most of the people of Andalusia.

To sum up, the Carolean reforms, which so affected the traditional life in Spain, turned the Corpus into a spectacle-festival to exalt the power of the Church, of the King, and of their respective representatives, once the games, the dances, and the festive-allegorical intrigue represented by the Tarasque, the demons, the giants and the big-headed figures had been prohibited. After these prohibitions, the people went from being participants to being passive spectators, and to a great extent, stayed away, as the grandiose spectacle of images and the colour of the long robes and uniforms recurred year after year without the slightest change. These reforms did not go against the hierarchical, majestic conception of the Corpus festival, but against the manner of celebrating it, in an attempt to rationalise the lives and the festive customs of the people of Spain and of Andalusia. So much so that this festival was one of the few that were authorised to continue to receive funds from the town councils, while many others, even those arising from local history, were excluded.

The traditional elements which had started in the Middle Ages, and more notably since the Renaissance, such as the Tarasque, the giants and big-headed figures and the rest of the personages, went from being symbols created to maintain the faith in the Christian mysteries to being considered irreverent and in bad taste. The Carolean reforms, without the subsequent disintegration of the stratified society and the resulting confrontations of class, would never have been effective. Save highly exceptional times, authorities of all types have always presided over the processions. The common people and the guilds ended up staying away from the procession. The Corpus we see in certain historic cities retains little of what the festival was until the 18th century. It had previously meant the synthesis between what was popular and what was cultured, where the rulers and the ruled took part, complementing each other and each occupying the place assigned to them by society. Carnivalesque elements and forms still exist in some of them as traces of the past, nowadays representing manifestations of the cultural heritage, and not of culture as understood in the anthropological sense.

The people of Andalusia, like so many others, have adapted, selected and reworked the religious mysteries and rituals formulated by the Church, prioritising them, simplifying them and even excluding them. The festival of Corpus Christi as an expression of the power of the Church and civil institutions survived while it provided recreational, participative appeal, and declined when it became a mere symbolic expression of those powers. The processes of secularisation and rationalisation and the diversification of leisure options have done the rest. The festival of Corpus, which in times gone by was intended to be the festival of divine and human power for the whole world, has become, for a few towns and cities, a ritual to affirm their identity, and for the rest, just another religious feast with no particular religious or social significance.

Throughout the Old Regime, it was the feudal seat of the Ponce de Leon family, its territory comprising the current municipal districts of Algodonales and El Gastor, and part of those of Grazalema and El Bosque. Due to its location between the Guadalete valley and the western limit of Penibetic Andalusia, in the late Middle Ages it was a place of trade between the reconquered Andalusia and the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, and the road between both areas passed in its vicinity. This is shown by the place names, and the Civitates OrbisTerrarum by Braun proves that it was a transit point between the Guadalete valley and the west of Penibetic Andalusia.

Until the 1960s -when the crisis of traditional agriculture commenced, and which was aggravated by the progress of the development plans undertaken at that time- the town had approximately 3,000 inhabitants, the great majority of whom worked in the primary sector. Above all, in agriculture, which with the exception of the orchards of Arroyomolinos and Bocaleones, was rain-fed cereal and olive groves, both tended without any type of mechanical power.

The remaining sparse working population was devoted to administration -municipal officials, education and healthcare- commercial establishments -family-run shops and bars- crafts -cobbler’s shops, hairdressers...- and certain industrial activities -a blacksmith, several bakeries and three flour mills, all family-run, and one oil mill. This last was the only workplace that brought together -although only seasonally- about two dozen men.

SIGNIFICANCE.

Just like any other community festival, the Corpus festival in Zahara is teeming with significance and functions, some of them manifest and others more or less hidden.

The most obvious significance is, of course, its religious significance. This may be inferred from the celebration of a number of liturgical acts, the adjustment of its date to the Ecclesiastical calendar, and the fact that the only streets that are decorated are those where the procession passes.

OObviously, the religious significance of the day of Corpus is common to the entire Catholic world. Therefore, if its celebration has particular characteristics in Zahara, this is because it also has other significances and functions of a social nature which, although they are not always consciously present in all those who take part in the festival -in one way or another, the entire town- these have not for this reason ceased to influence the fact that the festival has taken the shape we know today and which, broadly speaking, has remained almost unchanged for generations.

In times gone by, after the festival, when the townspeople had to clear away the branches and sedge -currently, the Town Council operatives do this work in a single day-, part of these materials accumulated in some of the lower parts of the town, and the children continued to play on them. For example, wrestling, rolling about or leaping more or less acrobatically...

In turn, the adults who own houses on the streets where the procession passes are, directly or indirectly, almost exclusively the real actors in the preparation of the festival, as they have to collect the materials with which to decorate the street and walls. Therefore, on the preceding days, they have to stockpile the sedge, and on the eve of the festival, the branches, which cannot be cut earlier without becoming spoiled.

For this operation, before the aforementioned agricultural crisis, those who permanently employed farm labourers and had draught animals would send them to wherever there was sedge and suitable trees -principally the orchards of Arroyomolinos and Bocaleones- for cutting and transporting.

The small landowners who had a pack animal would perform this operation for themselves, and it was not unknown for them to take over a day to complete it. The rest of the townspeople had to obtain the necessary materials by ordering them from muleteers, in exchange for payment. It may be said that these last were the only people who were paid specifically for tasks related with the preparation of the street decorations, as no material value was ever attributed to the sedge or the branches. The former, as it was usually obtained in places -the banks of rivers or streams- that were not directly owned by anyone. The latter, as the owners of the groves of trees where they were collected offered them free of charge. This enabled them to perform an act of piety, and to play an important role in the celebration if they did not own a house in the part of the town that was decorated, or if they did, to gain greater prominence.

In contrast to this interpretation, it may be objected that, although to a lesser extent, there were also landowners -including some of those belonging to what we have called the first group- who lived apart from the established processional route, and who might, in order to display their superiority as well, press for the establishment of a rota for the streets forming the route of the Eucharistic procession. In this way, they and their neighbours would also have the opportunity to decorate their houses. We do not know if this type of pressure ever took place; anyway, if it did, it never had any effect.

In any case, there is another factor that may also have contributed to the processional route being rigidly established as we now know it. This is because it is the only series of streets that enable the plotting of a continuous vegetal carpet.

However, we believe that the factor determining that the series of streets decorated is always the same is sociological. This path is that invariably followed by the other most solemn procession celebrated in Zahara, that of the Holy Entombment.

Conversely, other processions usually vary at least part of their route, in order to pass through other streets of the town.

As we have already mentioned, all the residents of the streets on the route of the Corpus procession, by decorating their houses, in spite of the great differences in status between them, appeared before the other residents of the town as equals. Possibly for this reason, the great landowners, with the corresponding ecclesiastic endorsement, found the way to stand out. This was the placing outside their doors of the aforementioned altars, for the Blessed Sacrament to make a stop. With these, we have the repetition of a religious element and a symbol of social differentiation in the festival itself.

On the other hand, in the same way that the decoration of their façades and their section of street equalled that of all those who owned a house on the processional route, the erection of altars expressed equality among those who installed them, over and above the differences in fortune prevailing between them.

Finally, as we have mentioned above, the third social function of the Corpus festival is that of a vehicle by means of which the bond between family members -in the broad sense-, between neighbours and between the entire local community is strengthened.

The decoration of the façades, due to its requiring the cooperation of at least two people, is an opportunity for family members or friends to come and help the owners of the houses. It is therefore an opportunity to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between all of them, especially if one bears in mind the festive context, the identification of the town with the festival and, for many, its religious significance. In any case, it should be mentioned that the work involved in decorating, in spite of requiring a certain physical effort, is not usually considered tedious or annoying by most of those who carry it out, due to the participation in the festival that it implies. For this reason, there are no residents of the streets on the route of the procession who, having the opportunity to participate in said work, do not do so.

The decoration of the streets is likewise a factor that strengthens the bond between all the townspeople. Thus, on the one hand, those whose homes are set apart from the processional route and who work on the decoration of their employers’ houses, or on the tasks undertaken by the Town Council in the aforementioned series of streets, also participate -although in exchange for payment- in the preparation of the festival in exactly the same way as if they lived in the part of the town where it takes place.

On the other hand, as the decoration of the streets represented an outlay for the part of the community which, in theory or in fact, had a greater financial capacity, the Corpus festival might be, due to its recreational nature, the symbolic price that said part of the community had to pay the other part, the economically less fortunate part, in exchange for allowing them to display their superior status. Perhaps in this way a social balance has been achieved due to which nobody, to date, has seriously called into question the manner in which the festival is celebrated or suggested its transfer to another part of the town.

We cannot end this article without acknowledging that in the analysis of the festival in question, some of the aspects of its celebration have been left aside; doubtless these would throw more light on the anthropological meaning of the celebration.