By coincidence, Danny Trom had planned his family vacation in Seville during Holy Week. Lost amid the processions of penitents, and with Xanax proving insufficient to counteract what was undoubtedly an atavistic Jewish anxiety, he improvised himself as a journalist covering this archaic experience of Catholicism.
I didn’t know that my week’s vacation in Seville would coincide with Holy Week.
On my first outing, the city was quiet, as if the tourists had deserted it. There were no cars. The clicking of heels from a few passers-by echoes on the cobblestones. The wrought-iron balconies are covered with red velvet cloths embroidered with gold patterns. The city is ours. At the corner of an alley, a crowd has gathered in front of the church. They are waiting. So we wait too, but for what? It doesn’t matter, the atmosphere is electric, something is about to happen. We move forward a little, but people are annoyed, so we back away. The heavy doors of the church open very slowly, eyes fixed on the entrance, when suddenly horns blare, followed by drum rolls. Like a monster emerging from a too narrow opening, an enormous golden chariot appears with Jesus dressed in white, led by two Roman soldiers and pointed at by Judas, all before the resigned eyes of Mary. I lift my daughter onto a block so she can see better. “No,” someone says behind me. Her mother lifts her onto her shoulders, and again we are told “no.” The procession moves forward amid the immense din of brass instruments, punctuated by silences interrupted by the sound of a heavy bell, as if composed by Ennio Morricone at the moment when the expected duel is nearing its conclusion. We know the scenario: death soon, resurrection soon after. In the meantime, the same suspense, as gripping as ever. For now, his death is imminent. The faces are closed, young and old alike. I realize that we are now in the middle of a large crowd. Overcome by a feeling of suffocation, I have to step back. We move away to breathe while the crowd gathers closer to the procession.
The relief is short-lived. Unbeknownst to us, the scene is being repeated simultaneously in front of 70 churches throughout the city, each congregation spewing forth an innumerable squad of penitents wearing capirotes, cone-shaped hoods that remind us foreigners of the KKK. The sound is indeed that of Mexican trumpets, but here there are no sombreros: the procession is dressed in tunics covering them from head to toe, the color of which varies according to the congregation, adorned with a huge cross. They are ghosts with two small holes for anonymous eyes, lining up to form endless queues marching to the rhythm of the drums. Every church, even the smallest, is capable of expelling hundreds of them. How is this possible, we wonder. Are they stacked up in the basement of the church and inflate when exposed to daylight? The result is endless columns of people in procession, soon criss-crossing the city along routes known only to the initiated. As we flee, we sometimes come across the silhouettes of latecomers hurrying to rejoin their ranks, hugging the walls. They are everywhere. Caught in this spider’s web woven by a KKK demiurge, we panic. There is no way to get back to our accommodation to shut ourselves away, as every alleyway we take leads to a crowd of people, fascinated by the procession and unwilling to give way. By the time Google Maps suggests an alternative route, the same column or another one, who knows, is blocking our way. The choreography is that of a martial prefect well versed in the art of encirclement. During Holy Week, it was no longer a city, but a jumble of moving dead ends. From confusion to disorientation to panic, the claustrophobic in me jumped happily from one stage to the next. In the throes of a panic attack and on the verge of a heart attack, I told myself I would never get out of there. Night falls. The labyrinth closes in on him, the nauseating smell of incense and the mournful percussion signals to him with every glimmer of hope found at the turn of an alley that the trap is fatal. After a daring breakthrough (carried out like a blind man trembling under the guidance of my daughter and wife), we find our shelter. We can hear them marching past our windows, but the relief is such that we smile, thinking anxiously about tomorrow.
“But this has nothing to do with the KKK!” repeats the angry local. ‘Besides, they hide sweets under the belts of their tunics to give to the children.’ The art of reassuring people.
The question remains as to why these penitents, hooded and wearing hats so tall and pointed that they seem to want to impale the stars, inspire such holy fear in us. With this capirote—a previously unknown word found on Wikipedia that we will find difficult to forget—which has no connection with the Protestant KKK, the penitent is supposed to mimic a condemned man whose guilty face is hidden from public view. Originally, he would flagellate himself, but customs have changed. Now he wants to humiliate himself for his sins, dressed in the manner in which heretics and other deviants appeared before the Inquisition. But then why do penitents look like executioners, the heretic wonders? Why does he feel like prey already surrounded by a pack of wolves? Why does the sickening smell of incense remind him of the smoke of the stake? Why does he think he won’t survive the roll of the drums? The native has no answer to this question; he has never even asked it himself. The fact is that the sound of shrill trumpets punctuated by bell ringing à la Sergio Leone does not exactly herald a duel. It is not two glances challenging each other, but a single inward gaze witnessed by the audience. For everything here is self-referential: self-punishment, self-humiliation, and self-absolution. We experience the passion of Christ, who is effectively responsible for his own tragedy since he kills himself, accomplishing what appears to be a sacrifice of self, which, in sociological terms, is the very form of altruistic suicide. It is the same person who dies and triumphs, who triumphs in the offering of his life, and this directly contradicts the common morality of Westerns, even spaghetti Westerns. As ignorant tourists, we misinterpreted the music on the day we arrived. Yet we knew that something of the duel persisted in this scenography. Otherwise, why would the penitent hold a grudge against those guilty of this murder, which was so beneficial to humanity? Shouldn’t he accuse himself internally and hunt him down externally? So, the portrait of the penitent becomes clearer: he is a martyr, victim, and executioner all in one. He is, in short, his own executioner. Beneath his garb, the two sides of the same character struggle: the one who suffers to atone for his sins, and the one who strikes out to purge the world of sin. The penitent hides from view under his hood because he is both guilty and a persecutor. In his place, would you not do the same?
