Jamie Clift, The Rotunda's longtime features editor, is studying abroad in Valencia, Spain at the Institute of Spanish Studies during the spring 2012 semester. Having stepped down from her position as features editor for the time being, Jamie Clift has charitably taken it upon herself to assume the role as The Rotunda's official Foreign Correspondent. In doing so, she will document her traveling experiences as an exchange student in each issue of The Rotunda.
Easter in Spain is quite different from the holiday we celebrate in the United States. While we tend to celebrate only on Sunday with a big family dinner, Easter egg hunts and giant baskets of candy and other assorted goodies brought by a magical rabbit, the Spaniards celebrate an entire holy week of Easter-related days, and in quite a different fashion. The Easter Bunny does not visit Spanish children, but I think they are okay with that. Instead of an Easter basket, children get a Mona de Pascua, which is a sweet croissant-like bread treat twisted into the shape of a nest and comes with an egg.
Sometimes this is a colored hard-boiled egg, and sometimes it is a chocolate Kinder Surprise egg. (Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal in the United States because they contain a plastic egg with a non-edible toy inside and children may choke on them. Many Europeans laughed when we told them this.) At first, I figured that all children would want the chocolate eggs with toys inside, but then my friend Marcos told me about the rest of the tradition. Apparently, the real eggs are better because you get to break them over someone's head, and you have to be very sneaky about it.
If this had been traditional in the US, my brother probably would have given me a concussion years ago. But it certainly sounds fun. Ashton and I purchased a Mona de Pascua at a 24 hour supermarket here, and it was delicious. We opted for a chocolate egg, not wanting to hurt each other, and it contained stickers with Porsches on them. We were most pleased. Valencia was a ghost town during Semana Santa. The typically busy streets were practically empty because during the holidays it is common to forsake the city in favor of visiting family in the countryside.
So, the majority of our Spanish friends and our host mom all went back to their villages, while the majority of our international student friends left the city to either join their host families in their villages or to go off to exotic locations like Italy or Morocco. We stayed here. On Saturday, we got on one of the tourist busses and left the city for Al Bufera, a large, shallow, freshwater lake just outside of Valencia. It was the first time in three months that we hadn't been totally surrounded by buildings, and that was refreshing.
We got to take boats to the center of the lake, where there were views of every description. One way, towards the sea, was completely flat, while on all other sides we were surrounded by mountains. We could even see the Valencia skyline far off in the distance at one edge of the lake. It was gorgeous. Easter Sunday was Ashton's twentieth birthday. We balanced Spanish Easter traditions with the best American style birthday that we could pull off. The first thing we did was go to the sketchy neighborhood close to the beach to see a traditional Spanish Semana Santa procession. These are most common in the south of Spain, but can be found in Valencia only in the traditional fishermen's neighborhoods. To say the least, it was an interesting sight.
People donned robes with pointed hoods, making them look like colorful Ku Klux Klan members, though they were certainly nothing of the sort. They carried banners showing the story of the resurrection, and the colors of their robes all signified different parts of the story. Each group of robed people had its own marching band, which played lively music for everyone to move along to. The people in robes were also accompanied by an array of costumed characters who threw flowers to anyone who would shout "guapa" or "guapo" at them.
There were at least four Jesus costumes and about a dozen Mary Magdalene outfits in the parade, some a bit more convincing than others. There were also a wide array of Roman soldiers, peasants and, most interestingly, prostitutes. Women of all ages, from toddlers to those well past middle age, wore prostitute costumes, which consisted of beautiful flowing Roman- style dresses, elaborate hairdos and gladiator sandals. Apparently, all of the girls fight over who gets to dress up as a prostitute because their outfits are the prettiest.
Just as we were beginning to wonder if the procession would ever end, a group of black robed people passed. Ashton was clever enough to guess that this meant that we were at the part of the story where Jesus was dead and a group of brightly robed people would soon bring news of his resurrection. Indeed, the procession ended with people in lovely brown and gold robes carrying very colorful banners.
That night, I promised Ashton that we could go wherever she wanted for dinner. So, we met our friend Mayte at a very fancy sushi restaurant she had wanted to try. We ate various sorts of sushi in candle-lit ambiance, and since this was a very fancy occasion, we bought a 12 Euro bottle of champagne. Part of me wondered what I would be doing if I were at home this Easter Sunday - probably eating chocolate all day and then going to Easter dinner with my family. I especially missed coloring eggs with my cousins, Leah and Nikki, like I do every year, but as I fiddled unsuccessfully with my chopsticks, I couldn't be sad. I have years of American holidays to look forward to, but I may never get to eat raw fish and seaweed in Spain on the holiest day of the year again.
