The Procession of La Virgen del Rocio
Almonte-Spain / May 2022
The Procession of La Virgen del Rocio, a very special religious festivity, took place in Almonte on May 29 2022. The sculpture of La Virgen del Rocio - a carved wooden statue of the Virgin and child whose imagery’s origins date to the 13th century - is carried out by locals around the town of Almonte, Huelva. This tradition usually takes place every seven years around the month of May. However, due to the covid pandemic, nine years had passed since the last time The Virgin saw the streets of Almonte in 2013. Because of this unfortunate delay, the followers of La Virgen del Rocio, who are mostly from the Andalusian cities of Huelva and Seville, had been looking forward to this event for many years.
This festivity is really meaningful to my family because both of my parents are catholics and firmly believers of this Virgin Mary’s title. As you can see in the picture of my father sleeping, on the top of the bed a drawing of La Virgen del Rocio hangs from the wall. Also, on the right bedside table there is a photograph of my mom attending The Procession in the 90’s. Both my mom and I were named after this Virgin: my mom’s baptismal name is María del Rocío, and mine is Rocío del Mar. In addition, my mom is originally based in Almonte, Huelva, the southern Spanish town whose church Nuestra Señora de la Asunción was hosting the sculpture of La Virgen del Rocio.
On May 29 my family - parents, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins - and I went from Seville to Almonte to gather together for the occasion. After driving for one hour, we arrived at the house in which my mom and her siblings were raised. The streets of Almonte had been prepared for weeks with numerous ornaments and decorations.
The procession started in the early morning when La Virgen left the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción around 8 am. The lucky ones either own a house whose facades face any of the several streets of the Procession’s route, or know a friend or a relative that has it. From the windows, balconies and terraces they saw the whole ceremony of the Virgin crossing the streets without having to wait long periods of time in the middle of the crowd.
Other people had to take to the streets of Almonte, run from one place to another and wait for The Virgin's arrival. To get the best views they had to stay in the same spot for long periods of time. In the meanwhile, children often got tired and bored. Occasionally, I was lucky enough to find a balcony to climb on right before the virgin arrived, getting a great view for taking pictures and avoiding the crowds.
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That was the first time I went to that festivity and was expecting something like the Holy Week of Seville. To my surprise, The Procession ended up being the most savage and wild religious events I had ever attended. Vast agglomerations of people followed La Virgen on her route around Almonte, pushing each other to get as close as they could get to the sculpture. The ‘toughest’ ones were the people - mostly men between 16 and 60 years old - that could actually get to the nucleus of the agglomeration and carry La Virgen sculpture with their own hands.
Due to all the emotions and efforts involved in the ceremony, people became very rude, defensive and territorial if they felt you were threatening their moment of glory they had been waiting for years. Once I wanted to climb on a random balcony I saw - as the kid in the picture above is doing - to get a good view of the street. However, there was a mother who had been waiting there for a while and had “reserved” that spot for her kids, even though that balcony wasn’t her property. I asked her permission to climb it so I could get to a tall street sign next to it. She refused in the beginning thinking I was playing with her, as she could not visualize how I was intending to jump on the street sign. Finally she had to give up because the balcony was not hers and there was no reason why she could not allow me to climb it for a few seconds to get to the sign that was next to it.
To be honest, I don't even know how I got on the sign, because it was really tall, I was wearing a long fancy skirt, my camera and a purchase. But I did it. My legs were between the wall and the signal, and my butt on the bottom part. I am really agile and have a good physical complexity, so the chances of falling were very low. In the worst scenario, I would have fallen on a crowd of people, so I wasn’t worried at all. I was so grateful to have one of the best views in the whole street without being annoyed by anyone. After approximately ten minutes, right before the Virgin arrived at the corner, the whole street was fully crowded. Somehow, I managed to stay on the street sign for like half an hour and got one of the favorite pictures I have taken in my whole career as a photographer. What I realized after that journey is how important are my physical abilities and social skills with people to my photography, way more than the photography technique itself.
Because so many people were fighting to carry the statue, it used to fall from one side to another. To prevent its complete fall, many locals pushed the opposite direction. In a single stick there could be up to seven or eight hands holding it. The closer you got to the Virgin, the less space between the people was left. Even though being in the middle of such a big crowd is pretty overwhelming, the almontenos that could get to the Virgin's surroundings felt very blessed.
On some occasions, the Virgin fell backwards and the agglomeration of people in the back had to deal with an exaggerated amount of pressure due to other people’s shoves. It felt like a strong wave that pushed your body from and to all directions and did not let you even breathe all of the sudden. To prevent anybody from being hurt, the most experienced ones made a sort of barrier leaving a little space between the ones who were carrying La Virgen, and the crowd that were just seeing the event.
However, on some occasions the pain was unavoidable, especially for the ones that were in the eye of the crowd.
For some of them, the pain was so unbearable that they had to rush out of there with their overwhelmed faces red and sweaty, their shirts open, torn and stained with blood.
Once I ended up in the nucleus of The Procession with all the big aggressive men around me. The more I resisted the pressure I was exposed to, the more overwhelming and claustrophobic it turned to be. I felt like I was swimming in a rough sea. The crowd that surrounded me was like a big heavy series of waves breaking on top of me. It didn’t matter how much I tried to get to the surface again where I could breath, I was completely out of control of what was happening around me so the only thing I could do was to stop resisting and wait for it to end.
One guy next to me knew from my impression that I was having a bad time and suggested in some sort of authority tone that I should not be there. He might have thought that I wasn’t tough enough because I was light weight and, of course, a woman. But what he didn’t know is that toughness is not a matter of height, weight or gender. I was tougher than all the macho men together. Getting that close to The Procession let me get really good shots, so I didn't care of being pushed and trodden by the whole f*ckin crowd.
Seen from an outsider perspective, The Procession of La Virgen del Rocio in Almonte might look too savage for a religious celebration. The most macabre moments took place when the parents threw their babies on top of the people and the crowd automatically lifted and carried them to the sculpture, the same way rockstars in concerts. The kids cried and screamed so bad, hoping they could get out of there as soon as possible. It looked almost like a sort of Sacrifice. Once they had touched the sculpture, they were blessed by La Virgen and were lifted backwards in the direction they came. To be honest, I could not fully understand how the babies got back to their parents. People with diverse capacities were carried out too, even if they were in a heavy wheelchair.
At 7pm the Virgin went back to the Church again. My heart was full of delightment during the whole event, despite the fact that I wasn't a catholic or believer or La Virgen. People's emotions altogether making this beautiful tradition possible was the only trascendental phenomena I was deeply engaged with. I'm writing this article in March 2023, almost a year after the event took place, and I still feel the tears that came out of my eyes while I was capturing with my camera the anthropological idiosyncrasies of this tradition and village.
