Covered Wagons

This is Santiago, also known as Saint James. In Spain he came to be called “Santiago Matamoros,” or “Santiago the Moorslayer.” If it helps, you can think of him as a sort of sponsor of the Crusades, like say McDonald’s and the Olympics. In this picture, taken at the cathedral in Compostela, we see Santiago in action—slaying a Moor. Only we can’t really see the slain Moor, not very well, because in recent years the Church has taken to hiding him with flowers. This might be called revisionist history. It’s not entirely clear whose sensitivities the flowers are meant to protect. The fact is, a lot of Moors were slain in the name of Santiago. And of course the Moors slew people, too. A lot of people. Maybe the Church has decided that all this slaying business is not very Christian, and means to bury it. If that’s the case, here’s hoping the Church doesn’t stop here, with a few flowers. Hard as it may be to believe, people around the world still get into slaying each other.

We certainly can’t say the flowers are there to protect visitors from graphic images of violence. If you want graphic images of violence, go to church. To wit, this shot from the cathedral in Segovia:

Even a doubter can’t help being moved by some of the Catholic iconography. The images do tend to drive the point home, to really tell the story. Which was of course the point of iconography in the first place: to tell the story to people who could not read, or did not understand Latin. Today most everybody in Spain can read, but, as perhaps in your country, not very many people do. So really it makes sense to keep the iconography around. Or it would make sense, if anybody still went to church. In fact not many people do. After forty years of Franco, who did some pretty nasty things in the name of God, church kind of lost its appeal.

Church-related holidays and parties, on the other hand, have not lost their appeal. In Andalucía every other week brings a day or two off to celebrate one saint or another. Generally these holidays don’t involve actually going to church to celebrate the saint; generally they involve getting together with friends and family to eat and drink and sing and dance. Some feast days present a curious blend of the Christian and the pagan—of rosary rubbing and wine chugging. As an example:

This caravan is taking part in the festival of Rocío, an annual springtime pilgrimage to the town of Almonte, where resides the Virgin of Rocío. Some pilgrims make the journey on horse-back, others travel by horse-and-buggy, but most opt for the fusion pictured here: big covered wagons and major horsepower. Why the big covered wagons? Why not just take a car? That’s simple: with a big covered wagon, the festivities can begin en route. In a big covered wagon, a large group of family and friends can eat and drink and sing and dance—which is, for a lot of people, the point of going to see the Virgin of Rocío.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.