A Cross Day and An Old “Friend”

La Fiesta de las Cruces (also known as “Cruz de Mayo”) is celebrated on the 3^rd of May in many parts of Spain and South America.

In Granada this tradition apparently began in the year 1625, when we are told that an alabaster cross was put up on the San Lázaro quarter around which people then performed various dances.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, children began creating their own temporary altars in the Albaicín and in the Realejo, complete with crosses and decorated with Manila shawls, ceramic jars, copper pots, sea shells, fans, old-fashioned farm utensils, red and white carnations and an apple with scissors buried into its flesh.

The children then hovered hopefully around their particular altar, asking passers-by for ‘chavico’ – money.

Nowadays there are even competitions held to judge the asthetic mastery of the “Cruces”, with three prizes given in each category; the categories being, amongst others, patios, streets and squares, shop windows and schools

La Fiesta de las Cruces is a vastly different celebration from Semana Santa, in Granada at least. Ostensibly a Catholic fiesta – apparently stemming from the search of the Byzantine empress, Santa Helena, for the cross on which Jesus was supposedly crucified – there is a definite pagan feel to that gives weight to the theory that the fiesta was actually introduced by the Romans, and is merely an equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon ‘May Day’.

At first glance, the profusion of crosses notwithstanding, it would certainly appear to have minimal religious significance – the population of the city adorned in their vestidos de gitana, noisily roaming the streets to then congregate in rowdy groups around the homemade bars that seem to spring up on every street corner, where they drink and dance until the early hours.

Without a doubt, La  Fiesta de las Cruces was far more my kind of party…

One of the first things I did after finding my feet in Granada, was to hop on a bus to Guadix. Why? you may ask. Well, curiosity mainly. It seemed silly to be so close and not go and have a nosy at the family and at the community that had spawned the faithless gypsy.

Manolo met me in the centre of the little country town, a town most famous for its cathedral and its troglodytes.

Yes, you heard me: an entire section of the city consists of caves that have been transformed into homes, and often quite swanky homes at that. This quarter is known and indeed signposted as “Barrio Troglodyte”.

After a whistle-stop tour and a brief catch-up with Mari Paz; an accitana (resident of Guadix) I had worked with in Mallorca; we jumped in the car and headed to the village of La Peza.

La Peza is a fairly important village in the history of the area, holding a strategic place in the route from the east to the valley of Genil and Granada itself; thus well-trodden by Byzantines, Romans and, of course, Moors.

In fact during the eight centuries of Moorish rule, La Peza had a bustling Arab community which left its mark with mosques (now converted into churches although some were destroyed) and many other architectural gems.

But it was not history I was there for, and when I was ushered through a curtain into Manolo’s tiny childhood home, the rise and fall of Muslim Spain was about the furthest thing from my mind.

At long last I came face to face with his mother: that stalwart creature who, having married at fifteen, had spent the next twenty-five years bringing up three sons and one daughter, picking olives and grapes alongside her husband and then cooking and cleaning, mending and tidying whilst he sat in a bar and made merry with his amigos.

The lot of the gitana is an unenviable one – since her wedding all those years previously, Manolo’s mother had never, not once, been for a relaxing coffee chit-chat with her friends. She had never been taken for a meal in a restaurant, or even for an ice-cream. Her role in life was to take care of the needs of her menfolk and train up her still-vibrant teenage daughter for a similarly thankless lifestyle.

In aspect at least, they were unmistakably gitano: his mother with her long, still-black plait stretching down her back and mules on her bare feet (what is it about this particular type of footwear that enslaves gypsy women the world over?), his father swarthy and twinkly-eyed, black fedora perched jauntily on thick black curls.

All three of Manolo’s siblings were tall – it appeared I had allowed my heart to be broken by the runt of the family – attractive and surprisingly fair compared to him; and, despite my feminist teeth grating at the servile treatment and behaviour of their matriarch, they came across as a very close-knit and happy family.

Roast chicken was on the menu that day, which led to Papá, with much accompanying mirth, recounting the tale of a youthful (must have been very youthful indeed – he was married at eighteen) romance with a British girl, whose parents recoiled in shock when he picked up a chicken leg to gnaw at as opposed to daintily de-fleshing it with his knife and fork.

Mamá, on the other hand, was rather more preoccupied with where it was exactly that I came from. I could not seem to rid her of the idea that I was from Germany, and when I repeatedly insisted that I was actually from England she said,

“Well, of course, but England is part of Germany!”

Perhaps she had been gazing out of the schoolroom window and dreaming of  getting married at fifteen in order to cook, clean, mend and tidy for the rest of her life when her history teacher read out the results of that particular 1945 match…

After a very enjoyable lunch, a steady procession of curious neighbours and relatives began popping in to try to work out who I was, and failing that, loudly asking the immediate family:

“Who is that girl? What’s she doing here?” as if it was a forgone conclusion that I would be deaf, dumb or just plain dim.

It was after an enjoyable, if rather surreal, day that the Manolo chapter of my life finally concluded, with the entire family (with the exception of poor, housebound Mamá) kindly driving me the 60km back to Granada where an affectionate but final adios was issued…

…thus shutting  my window onto the fascinating world of the gitano, for good.