feliz pascua

juan tells me that that is happy easter in spanish. he has been greeting all comers with this announcement and gets a response ranging from perplexity to joy along the way depending on his pronouciation of the famous spanish 'th'
easter in spain is an interesting time. on good friday we were in los gronos. i was very tired after dinner and juan convinced me to walk into town to see the cathedral but i put very firm limits on how far i was prepared towalk and how long i was going to spend there. we came upon the town's santo viernes (good friday) parade and had to tear ourselves away in the end.
the parade consisted of waves of drummers dressed in white gowns and tall pointy hoods that only had holes for the eyes. each group of drummers was escorting a differnt statue of the stations of the cross. each statue had its own group of drummers with their distinctive coloured pointyhoods. they were walking very slowly to this loud repetitive drum beat and paused at different points. there were some men carrying crosses and in one section women wearing the black mantillas. some other people who watched for longer said the parade lasted about 3 hours in all. it had an almost menacing feel although the local people didn't seem take on an overly serious attitude. one of our fellow walkers had the same feeling as us that it was all a bit sinister and scary
easter saturday we were in najera. again absolutely exhausted after a 30 k walk to find a seriously overcrowded hostel with no hot water left for showers (i was encouraged to take a cold shower by the hotelier as the cold water is 'very good for the skin').
juan's feet are slowly falling apart so we also had to do some serious consulation at the farmacia for some new foot care products (silicone inserts for the boots which seem to have helped today). given all that we were not really on the look out for any events but a chance look in the local church found us in the middle of a prayer time. one lady was calling the prayers and a small group of elderly people were echoing or responding to her words. we left as we thought that was the service only to find the crowds building and a group of men, along with the priest, trying to get some kind of fire in a bowl going that they were presumabely going to carry into the church. not sure what that was all about.
it was 9 o'clock and we had to get back as the hostels mostly close the doors at 10 o'clock.
we are in santo domingo de la calzada tonight and will go to the mass in the church but who knows what will happen. this town has their own take on the resurrection story. the town was established inthe 1100s by st domingo de la calzoda. he built an inn and a place to care for pilgrims and spent his life clearing paths and building bridges to improve the pilgrim walk. in the 1400s a german family was pilgrimming to santiago and the inn keeper's daughter in this town took a fancy to their son. he spurned her advances. she then planted a silver cup in his possesssion and accused him of robbery. he was tried for this and hanged. after the hanging his parents found that he was not trully dead. he had been kept alive by st domingo. they went to the local judge to tell him this. the judge replied that their son was as dead as the two chickens on his plate. with that the two chickens started crowing. to this day the cathedral has housed 2 chickens in a specially built part of the cathedral. at the hostel where we are staying there is a small chicken shed of white chickens. i presume on rotation duty in the cathedral.
i am in another world here