Festivities

Right now it's Semana Santa, or Holy Week. It's normal in Spain for people to have the week off from work or school, so everyone knows what you mean when you say "Semana Santa," this in contrast to the U.S., where, while the phrase "Holy Week" exists and could definitely be used to talk about the church calendar, you might be regarded with confusion if you asked someone what they were doing during Holy Week. Even when we're speaking English here we tend to use the Spanish name. Here in Vigo the break has been especially long, because the Wednesday preceding Semana Santa was a Vigo-specific holiday called Reconquista (though I had to work since my school is not in Vigo!) and that Thursday was the General Strike.

I. General Strike

I got up early to try to catch my bus. Some dumpsters had been tipped over or placed in the middle of the street. People had placed stickers reading "Pechado pola folga xeral" (closed because of the general strike) on the windows and signs of different stores and offices, including municipal offices that wouldn't be closed. Of course no bus came so I went back home.

During the middle of the day there were big marches of thousands of people through the streets. Galician nationalist flags were ubiquitous, since here in Galicia the nationalist cause and leftist politics are closely linked. People chanted "Non, non, non, á reforma laboral" (No, no, no to the labor reform) and "Contra a reforma, contra o capital, folga, folga, fol-ga xeral" (Against the reform, against capital, strike, strike, general strike). I only saw a small part of these protests, but evidently 80,000-100,000 people marched--and that's in a city of about 300,000.

In the evening I had a tutoring class with an older student who speaks English very well, has traveled to the US and to England, and is also quite the lefty. He told me that he had gone with other strikers outside the Xunta offices (the municipal offices where I had noticed the stickers) and yelled "Esquiroles! esquiroles!" and that the venetians blinds had gone clattering down on the inside. (Esquiroles means scabs or people who don't participate in a strike-- and according to the dictionary it comes from a Catalan word meaning squirrels.) We were talking about the strike and he asked me the English word for "piquetes." "Well, we have something called a picket line, but it's not really the same..." --"Oh right!" he responded, "I remember seeing that in Boston. The people who march around in circles, right? Ha, ha, ha! I took a photo of that because I thought it was so funny!" You see, the piquetes here are much more agressive; they are groups of people who block the way of people trying to go to work in cars, or of trucks trying to deliver things, or buses, and intimidate businesses that are thinking of opening.

By the evening, some supermarkets had opened (but they had their metal shutters half-closed in case they needed to shut again) and there were more city buses on the streets.

II. Palm Sunday / Domingo de Ramos

In the days before Palm Sunday there were little stands on the street where you could buy woven palm fronds, and when I got to church on Sunday there were olive branches for people to take. I assumed that the branches were for little kids, like in the church I went to growing up. I don't think this was really the case. Most people took them. I wasn't late or anything and the pews were already completely full; by the time the service started all the folding chairs were full too and people had to stand in the sides of the church. At the beginning of the service they blessed the branches: everyone held them up and the priest waved a small metal stick with a hollow ball with holes which dispensed holy water (according to Wikipedia this is called an Aspergillum). After the service was over I exited into the street and noticed that everyone was congregating on either side of the street. It was a bright, hot day, and there was a kind of carnival atmosphere with vendors selling balloons and rosquilla pastries. And of course lots of really really well-dressed kids (this is a Spanish specialty). From far down the street you could hear the sounds of drums and make out a procession. As the procession came closer, police came to close off the street (it's a major street of three or four lanes). It was a religious fraternity, with people in white robes with conical magenta hoods that masked their faces. They carried a float that showed Jesus on the donkey, and which was heaped with olive branches. Everyone was in the street now, facing the front of the church, and the float stopped at the front steps. The bishop, who'd come with the procession, stood at the top of the steps, wearing his mitre, and, with a microphone, led the crowd in a prayer especially for mothers and children. Then all the children held up the branches again and they blessed them again.

III. Reconquista

Reconquista was technically on Wednesday, but it was celebrated all weekend. Although the word Reconquista usually refers to the reconquest of Spain from the Moors, this particular festival commemorates the reconquest of Vigo from the French troops of Napoleon. For the festival, the old town was filled with stands selling food, wine, and artisans' products. There were people wearing the traditional Galician costume and dancing to Galician music (the main instruments being bagpipe, tambourine, and drums).
On Sunday there was a sort of performance (I almost wrote reenactment, but that wouldn't really be accurate) of the battle between the French and the Spanish. At the beginning, a group of people dressed as French soldiers marched into the Puerta del Sol. They were wearing the typical Napoleonic uniform with the crossed sashes and tall képi or beaverskin hats; one person had the imperial eagle standard with a banner listing all their victories... Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena and so on. The crowds whistled and booed enthusiastically. A man dressed as mayor of Vigo came out onto a balcony and tried to reassure the people that everything was okay. Then two French soldiers accosted him and out came a French general. In campy French-accented Galician he declared that he was taking the city for the Glorious Emperor Napoleon. The soldiers ran up the tricolor and opened up a banner that said Hotel de Ville. The general led the troops in cries of "Liberté... Egalité... Fraternité... Vive la France!" Everyone booed furiously. Then on one stage, a woman addressed the women of Vigo and told them they had to do their part to defeat the French. The women on the stage began to dance with French soldiers in order to distract them while their rifles were stolen and passed overhand across the crowd. Then on another stage there was another skit in which some Spanish people were gunned down in a tavern by French soldiers. The "mayor" read out their names from the balcony--I guess they were real people. Then the mayor declares that he cannot support such an outrage and says that the French must go. Everyone began throwing lettuce and tomatoes through the air toward the French soldiers--real flurries of lettuce. The French soldiers marched off through the streets and the actors dressed as 19th century Spaniards, armed with guns or pitchforks, marched after them. At this point we got kinda lost in the crowds and didn't see much of the battle in the old town. At the end we descended to the port where the French surrendered and there were fireworks.