Thinking of The Romería de El Rocío

Hope this finds you well.

For reasons that are not forum fähig, the love of my life and I got involved in The Romería de El Rocío. The not Muslim part of the world tends to look with wonder when the haj (hajj) happens. This is the little known Christian haj.

On the second day of Pentecost there is an enormous gathering, procession, party to celebrate the virgin of El Rocio (Andalusia - Spain). When I say enormous, please understand that when two million people gather to party, bring their women, children, horses, giga deep freezers stacked with food, truckloads of wine, their most beautiful clothes, guitars, you name it, it’s enormous. I could not see it before me, before I actually saw it all.

The party starts 5 years before the real one because you’ve got to make reservations. Apart from this, there are thousands and thousands of tents or people sleeping on, in and next to their cars alongside the roads, in the woods etc.

There are enough pictures on the internet to give you a glimps of the scale of it all.

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.npBT9UN2SO-kEcyHcHoIXgHaEK%26pid%3DApi&f=1

With all the empathy a man or an artist can muster, I think of all the people who could not come to do their sacred thing. Because, of course, there is no haj this year. Could well be that a few hundred thousand people will come anyway. And I think about them as well.

I believe in the powers of the virgin, but if her powers are strong enough to keep everybody safe? I doubt it seriously.

Today our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved. In El Rocío or elsewhere.
And to the most beautiful horses you have ever seen.
Kind regards, Gus