Cristo atado a la columna

This procession was quite a different experience from Sunday's. We arranged to meet lapsed blipper guiri and F in town at 8, to give us time for drinks and tapas beforehand. A slight glitch meant we ended up in two separate bars but they weren't very far apart and it was soon sorted with a bit of WhatsApping,

They told us about their two and a half months travelling in India, and we swiftly paid and left when the band started parping outside, a signal that the Christ bound to the column was about to come out of the church just round the corner.

We squeezed through the crowd, but the situation wasn't as good as last time (no slope, limited space, lots of people in front of us), hence not as good a vantage point. The large crowd waited in near silence for the statue to emerge, very unusual for a Spanish crowd -- just a soft murmur of conversation. It came out in near darkness, lit with flames at the four corners and with incense billowing forth -- very atmospheric. Indeed my blip is so blurred impressionistic that I've added the float itself in extras. This one was carried fore and aft on twin poles by twenty penitents in hoods, hence they could see where they were going. They'd never get it round the corners in the old town though.

After the band had played it out of the church, in the silence two singers, a man followed by a woman, sang beautifully a capella in the throat voices of flamenco singing -- it was lovely. We didn't stay much longer -- guiri and F are still recovering from two weeks of illness brought on by the travelling, and S wanted to be up early. Watch this space, I may yet be tempted to go to another procession!