snoringdog wrote: ↑March 18th, 2024, 7:14 pm
Are fiestas primarily religious things?
Well, the core of the festivities is always the celebration of some saint or some denomination of the virgin Mary. If you're participating in the whole shebang of the annual fiestas of València, for example, you'd be in traditional dress right now walking in procession (maybe for hours, with your children, maybe pushing a pram) with a bouquet of flowers to be put as an offering into a giant wooden structure representing the virgin in the square in front of the chapel by the cathedral. And you'd go to mass etc. Here's a photo: https://www.vaqueradelespacio.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ofrenda-int05.jpg
If you look at it coldly from the outside, the core of it all is profoundly sexist, elitist and retrograde. Each neighbourhood elects their "queen" and to be elected the main queen of the whole city (la Fallera Mayor) your family has to spend a small fortune on dresses, jewelry and time to go to all the preparatory acts. The young woman selected is always good looking and from a family with connections to the economical and political elite.
Here, the cult of the virgin Mary is more important than Christ. MIL prays only thinking of the virgin, and its extension is the matriarchy that used to rule a traditional Spanish household from within. She silently (sometimes not) judges everything that goes outside the norms of the conservative hierarchy. Above all was dictator Franco, then the Bishop, then the local priest, doctors and then the local big shots but behind closed doors she and all other "decent" married women would ultimately reign over their family with the aid of the Virgin.
