The holiday bridge

Next door a skilled team is transforming the house - one of the oldest in the village - into something that will undoubtedly be wonderful, but at the moment is a centre of banging, drilling, dust and pop music. No complaints, we're very glad someone will be moving in soon, an empty house is a sad one.

One of the workers is more chatty than the others, more willing to engage, although he always has an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips which doesn't help my understanding of his Gomeran Spanish.

'You're working today?' I asked him. 'But it's Saturday, and the romería!'

He chuckled, wobbling the cigarette, and said something I very nearly got.

'Only until midday?'

'Mas o menos,' he agreed - more or less. A little more, his hands indicated. Then he'd be off, he said, smacking his palms together like clashing symbols, a gesture meaning 'that's it, done, finished'.

He did it with great verve, with notable glee, the significance of which I didn't appreciate at the time. It was normal practice for the guys to stop a little early on Saturday then take Sunday off but this particular Saturday was a very special one with a huge, enormously important street procession, the romería in honour of the Virgen de Guadalupe, the island's patron. The town would fill with singers, drummers, strummers and dancers not only from San Sebastián but from all over the island and from several of the other islands too.

'And you'll have Monday off as well,' I suggested. 'For the bajada.'

He nodded, grinning cheerfully. 'Sí, sí, la bajada.'

The bajada is an even bigger event than the romería and rarer than the Olympics, taking place only every fifth year. It means literally 'the descent' but refers to the landing of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the main beach of San Sebastián, having been transported here by fishing boat from her home in a small chapel just along the coast. The Virgen is a representation of the Virgin Mary, a small effigy carved in wood but with a local importance way beyond her size. Her arrival on the town beach unleashes floods of emotion for true Gomerans as well as lots of money for the local cafes.

The day of the bajada is always a Monday and, of course, a holiday. In practice one day is not enough - the celebrations extend to breakfast time the next morning with an all-night dance - so on these special five-yearly occasions Tuesday is also a holiday. It's not quite official but it happens, with schools closing along with most of the shops - kind of unofficially official.

Even more unofficial was something else that happened this particular year. As the dates worked out, the following Thursday was an annual national holiday, the Día de La Hispanidad. Which meant that - but wait, first we've got to invoke a brilliant feature of the Spanish way of life and leisure called el puente, the bridge. If, for example, a holiday falls on a Tuesday, it's unofficially accepted that going back to work after the weekend for just a day, before another day off, is hardly worth the bother so Monday is labelled un puente and becomes a de facto holiday as well, creating a long weekend. These can also be triggered at the end of the week by a holiday on Thursday, turning Friday into a puente.

Following this principle, if everyone was going to be off work on Monday and Tuesday because of the bajada, it was hardly worth starting again for just a day before the national holiday on Thursday, so Wednesday became an unofficial holiday as well. Friday was already labelled a puente, so the end result was that everyone took the whole week off.

The workers next door, others on municipal roadworks and various worksites nearby, even the schools and colleges joined in this agreeable subterfuge, although the latter pretended it was because of an unusually prolonged heatwave.

And thus, the explanation for our next-door workman's hearty sign-off on the previous Saturday. He knew. I can't fault this as an attitude. It's not that people get nothing done: Gomeran workers start early and go at it hard all day, but if there's an opportunity for a break and enjoyment they grab it with both hands. When it comes to establishing a healthy work-life balance, I think they're well ahead of the game.

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Multiple puentes such as this recent one are a recognised Spanish phenomenon called the acueducto (aqueduct) or macropuente. They are frowned upon by economists and right-wing politicians but not so much by everyone else.

It seems that the French also follow the admirable tradition of holiday bridges, les ponts. I can't see it taking hold in Britain, and anyway there's little opportunity as most of the bank holidays are on Monday or Friday - no doubt deliberately. A spoilsport former Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy, in 2012 tried to do that to Spain, proposing that all national holidays should be on Monday or Friday. Fortunately he failed because many of them are religious celebrations and the Catholic church wasn't going to have those messed about with.

The Virgen de Guadalupe five-year festivities are called the Fiestas Lustrales which is another way of saying five-yearly. The Lustrales featured in two earlier stories: A moment of madness, 18 April 2018 and The little dark one, 10 January 2019.

The little dark one

A big day for the village. On one of her very rare trips around the island, she would pass through here as she returned to San Sebastián, and would pause to receive a civic reception by the villagers.

The reception was to be held in a car park beside the main road, extensively beautified with bamboo fencing, palm fronds and swathes of flowers. We arrived shortly before the appointed time but, as is habitual with the famous, she was a little late in arriving. The sun had already given up and was sinking behind the hills, turning the sky into a glorious son et lumière show. The soundtrack for the show came from a group of folk singers, strumming guitars and singing appropriately demure traditional songs.

Passing by the front-row seats we greeted our many neighbours who had probably been waiting there patiently for an hour or more - Gomerans are good at waiting patiently - and found a spot to lean against a wall.

Crowds had gathered not just from our village but from other villages around, and even from the town. This was an Event! A large police presence - well, two of them, Felipe and Fernando, but notably animated - attempted to keep the wandering villagers away from the main road, without much success.

The problem was that the car park itself was now fully occupied by a small stage garlanded with flowers, rows of seats for the elderly, the strumming folk group and a bar counter with beer fountain, leaving little room for the stream of cars still arriving, which therefore had to park along both sides of the main road.

Finally the two harrassed policemen introduced an impromptu one-way flow system which they controlled at each end with arm gestures and whistles. No-one in the meandering crowds got killed and although the line of vehicles queuing to get by on the main road grew steadily longer, many of them tooted their horns in cheerful support when they eventually passed through. Nobody would complain about a visit by La Morenita.

A sudden surge in mobile phone activity signalled that at last her cavalcade was approaching. She drew up in a kind of self-assembly Popemobile, a huge glass cabinet carried on the platform of a sparklingly clean pickup truck. Designated assistants from the village helped to extract La Morenita, perched on a golden plinth draped with red velvet and fresh flowers. They carried her with exquisite care to her place on the stage, where she was formally greeted with speeches from the attendant priest and a representative of the organising committee. A guitar duet played a classical piece for her, and some of the local children sang a song of praise, a verse each. They’ll remember this day, with pleasure I hope.

La Morenita, ‘the little dark one’, is an affectionate family name for the Virgen de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is the island’s patron saint. She normally resides safely at home in a little chapel by the sea, but today she is nearing the end of a journey that began nearly two months ago, when she was taken from her chapel, placed in a fishing boat and carried around the coast amid a large flotilla to land on the beach in San Sebastián. It happens only once every five years, the years of Las Lustrales, which is a fancy way of saying five years.

La Morenita is the guardian and protector of every town and every village on the island. She is hugely popular and revered. Hand-painted signs around our car park and on the main road shouted Gracias, Madre! Thank you, Mother! in huge letters.

Watching all this adoration, it was clear that there was something more than mere religion involved here. The Catholic religion is no longer the powerful force that it used to be in Spain, when attendance at Mass and events such as this was obligatory.

No, La Morenita represents something more. She represents the island, the people, the way of life. She is a rock-solid core to the island’s culture and a social glue that binds everyone together. I’m a little bit envious. Try as we might, we can never experience the sense of belonging that La Morenita provides to those who were born here.

Ah, well… We can still join in with the celebrations and enjoy the free paella and wine. After an excitement like this visit you need to calm down again slowly over some celebratory refreshments. Gomerans are good at celebratory refreshments.

Notes for the serious student
I touched on the subject of this five-year celebration in a previous story (A moment of madness, 18 April 2018) but left open the question of who exactly she is, this Virgen de Guadalupe.

Physically La Morenita is a very small statue. Really remarkably small, about the height of a wine bottle, but given stature by a tall crown and a splendidly elaborate plinth to stand on. Her holiness is emphasised by an aureole, a large gold circle like a ring of light behind her.

The Virgen de Guadalupe is venerated in many Catholic communities worldwide including Mexico, where she is also the patron saint. Her dark skin is undoubtedly due to her South American origins.

She seems to have arrived in La Gomera fairly early in the Spanish occupation, the imagen or statue having been carved in wood by an unknown sculptor sometime in the 16th century. She was awarded her own chapel on the coast in Puntallana, where it remains today, but she became the island’s patron only in the early nineteenth century when she took over from the Virgen del Buen Paso.

But then, does any of this really matter? In La Gomera, La Morenita is who she is, she’s always there, and once every five years we celebrate such certainty in a world of constant change.

A moment of madness

It's only April and already the excitement is growing in the air, the anticipation, like the scent of spring blossom that promises summer.

The ayuntamiento, the town council, has just announced with great ceremony the winning illustration for the poster. We'll have to wait until October for the event itself - a very special celebration that takes place only once in five years, an elaborate homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of the island.

Seeing the poster design triggered memories of a strange - and at the time, very sad - story from this same event many years ago. The poster depicts the fleet of boats that will accompany the Virgin on her voyage around the coast, and it immediately made me think of Isabel and Isidro.

It was a few weeks after the celebration that Isidro sat himself at our café table: 'Con permiso?' May I?

'Of course! Que tal, how's things?'

'Mal,' he answered, briefly. Bad. He ordered a black coffee.

We had known Isidro and his wife Isabel for many years. They ran a small business (now long gone) where we began as customers and soon became friends. The last time we saw them they'd been seated with a friend of Isabel's at the front of a ferry, one of the scores of vessels large and small bobbing around the Virgin's boat on her big day. Isidro was strumming his guitar and the three of them were singing a stirring song in the patron saint's honour, swaying from side to side in happy unison.

Today he was looking much less happy. 'She's kicked me out,' he announced, flatly.

'Who's kicked you out?'

'Isabel. We've separated.'

I laughed, I'm afraid, and so did J. People joke about ditching their lifelong partner: 'Where's your wife?' 'I sold her last week.' It's the kind of silly tease you tell your grandchildren to make them giggle, or sometimes cry.

After a moment, seeing Isidro's expression, we both stopped laughing and J said, 'It's a joke?'

'No joke. I've moved out. Living apart.'

This was too ridiculous to believe. Minnie Mouse booting out Mickey? Popeye leaving Olive Oyl? Isidro and Isabel were inextricably part of each other.

It was the friend's fault, Isidro alleged. Verónica. She and Isabel had been close friends at school but as a young woman Verónica left the island in search of wider adventures. They kept in touch though and now Verónica was back, no longer young, and with nowhere to live. She moved in with Isabel and Isidro.

Her arrival was like dropping a firework cracker into an afternoon siesta. Verónica woke them up with a flash and a bang. Well, she woke her friend, anyway. The two women returned to girlhood, taking up where they'd left off several decades ago, launching themselves like parrakeets into a new spring. Isabel cast off her old, tired plumage and emerged in fresh and colourful display, her clothes of the latest season instead of whatever's in the wardrobe, her hair tinted and curled, her make-up bright with pink blushes and blue shadows. She became again a partygoer, late-night dancer, diner in restaurants with hilarious groups of friends.

Isidro wanted none of this and was quickly written off as a bore.

I don't know the painful details of the final weeks but the outcome was that Isidro moved out of the family home, leaving the two girls to enjoy their second youth alone. It turned out to be a fairly short one because Verónica had a heart attack, so for a while Isabel became a nursemaid. Eventually her friend recovered enough to take flight again, back to wherever she'd come from.

I would like to imagine the two of them, Isabel and Isidro, sitting quietly on a park bench in the shade of a palm tree, chewing over this episode: so what was that all about, then?

Fear of growing old, the feeling that life had crept slyly past while they were busy running the business, bring up the kids, doing the dusting, polishing the car? A cry for more, another chance, let's have a little more fun this time?

She and he would sit there in silence for a while, side by side, looking over the grass and the trees and the flowers, then one of them would take the other's hand and they would decide it had just been a moment of madness.

But no. They didn't get together again. After a few years of living alone Isidro found another partner and, a while later, so did Isabel. They continued attending the five-year October celebrations, of course, and I'm sure they'll be at this year's, although they're getting a bit old for the strumming and singing.

Notes for the serious student
Every year there is a celebration of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the Monday following the first Sunday in October. Once every five years the celebration expands into a huge series of events called the lustrales, a word that nowadays just means five-yearly celebrations. (Any more and we'll get drawn into discussing Latin and ancient Rome, which I'd be wiser to avoid.)

On Monday the eighth of October this year, the Virgin will be taken from her permanent home in a little chapel on the coast at Puntallana, loaded onto a gaily decorated fishing boat and carried southwards to San Sebastián, accompanied by a huge fleet of vessels from tiny dinghies and sailboats to luxury yachts, car ferries and naval patrol ships.

In the port of San Sebastián she will be transferred to the beach and into the town to be feted with singing, dancing and fireworks. This is called the Bajada, the landing, and most of the population of the island will be there to watch, along with many more from the other islands. It's a big do. There is even a dedicated website:

http://www.lustraleslagomera.es/

There is much more to be said about the Virgen de Guadalupe - for example, she's called affectionately La Morenita, the little dark-skinned lady. Why is she dark? But I think it had best wait for another time.