It’s that time of year again – approaching Easter – when Órgiva’s church swells like a broken dam of people filling a cave. Everyone, except us it seems, is in their Sunday best, even though it’s a Thursday. The band tuck themselves in above the church’s entrance and fill the air with a dense sound.
Yesterday, the religious calendar deemed that the good folk of Órgiva were to remove the statue of Cristo from the altar, carry it forward a few paces where pictures were then taken and, importantly, the statue wiped with tissues. People then tucked them away for future use (for when they get a cold, presumably).
The precursor to today’s bang on the ear (here is last year’s event) happened in a relatively short burst of bangers, but it was just a loud and brutal as the main event, and we were inside the church. Apparently, and for some inexplicable reason, it’s to ‘cleanse ones sins’ at the moment Cristo is hauled from the altar. To be frank, if you didn’t know the cacophony was coming, it would be your pants that would need cleansing more than anything.
It was a strange affair, baffling to the uninitiated but a unifying event for the attendees, who hugged and kissed before pointing their smartphones to capture it all. It seemed like going to a pop concert en famille – or should that be, con familia.
We left the crush to visit Órgiva’s weekly market, worlds away from the crash, bang, wallop of the church. We bought garlic, tomatoes and peas. That’s all we needed.
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© con jamón spain
con jamón spain 
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