San Isidro: cocido, churros y chocolate (part 3 of 3)

Eating and drinking are fundamental, not incidental to the Fiesta de San Isidro

Waiting on line for the free cocido madrileño in the Parque San Isidro on the Día de San Isidro

Ok, I promise this is the last entry about San Isidro, but it was two days of cool and intense activity, with lots of photos and videos, and many interesting things, and while I was originally planning to make yesterday's entry "chotis, chulapos, and churros" I realized that song, dance, and funny costumes deserved their own entry separate from food, drink, and picnicking (not to mention the fairground ride and fireworks).

Possibly because a friend and fellow researcher I've met here is writing a dissertation about food and politics in 1940s Spain, and possibly because of older research interests of my own, I couldn't help but notice how much importance food is given in the fiestas de San Isidro.  This is a city which has known hunger, and a fair number of the popular songs for San Isidro come close to "food porn."  I was initially impressed on Sunday afternoon in the Plaza de Vistillas that the song which got the audience up from their chairs and dancing (as well as singing along) was something which I initially, listening, thought was a love song, but which actually I would classify more as a "food song" called "Cocidito madrileño."  (A few hours later I mentioned to the friends I was with that there appeared to have been a song dedicated entirely to cocido, whereupon the two of them - mother and daughter, both Madrid-born - exchanged sheepish grins and began to sing "cooocidito madrileñooo...")  Picture an entire plaza full of people singing "porque eres gloria pura, porque eres gloria pura, cocidito madrileño!" in a spasm of civic pride and hungriness and you get a sense of the scene.


The recording I linked to above has the entire lyrics written out.  They are about cocido, or stew.  ("Cocer" just means to boil.  Huevo cocido is a boiled egg.  So a generic "cocido" is just something that has been cooked for a while.)  Cocido madrileño as opposed to cocido andaluz and stew in other parts of Spain is distinguished by the way it is served more than its ingredients, which are (like most traditional stews) basically originally the leftovers of various types of meat, mixed with beans and pasta.  (Nowadays you can buy frozen packages of the various types of meat for cocido in the supermarket, because in an era when people aren't slaughtering their own pigs, it's not that common to have the less desirable cuts that go into cocido.)  Aside from that it's a tremendously catchy tune, the lyrics of the song strike me as notable for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I looked up the date, and as best as I can tell, the song dates from 1949, when most of Madrid was - not to put too fine a point on it - starving.  So in the context of severe rationing of basic staples, the opening verse, "don't talk to me about the banquets of Ancient Rome, or the menu of the Plaza Hotel in New York, or foie gras or lobster thermidor..." starts sounding like a wistful elaboration of dream foods, rather than a contemptuous dismissal.  And the insistence on the humble "cocidito madrileño" as being "de ayer y de mañana" (yesterday and tomorrow), notably leaves out today.  The song is about a once and future food, which is sadly absent in the present.  As you can tell from the picture at the top of the entry, one of the traditions of the Día de San Isidro is a free communal meal of cocido madrileño (the organizers were proudly announcing that they had served more than 6000 by 2:00 PM, and presumably this is part of the 1.2 million euro budget the city spends on the event).  My Madrid friend commented that "you have to wait on line for hours for a tiny plate of cocido" and that it wasn't worth it (so we waited on line for one hour to buy other food), but while the tradition is now more or less purely a communal celebration and people wait on line rather in the good humored spirit of waiting to get free Shakespeare in the Park tickets, I wonder if its roots might not have been in the dark years of the postwar, when it was effectively the equivalent of a soup kitchen (or a cocido kitchen).

Secondly, leaving aside the possible sinister timing of the perky "Cocidito madrileño" song, the lyrics are a remarkably frank and revealing comment about gender roles.  Unlike the tortured (and torturous) Como agua para chocolate, "Cocidito madrileño" more or less takes for granted that food is made with love, and moreover that women express love for men by feeding them.  (I'm impressed that the song pretty much makes this universal without even the classic "good" woman/"bad" woman divide, since cocido is equally served by mothers and sisters and also by lovers sitting on the grass under the trees in spring time.)  I wonder actually about the implications of the deep-seated assumption that if women love you they will feed you (and the converse that if they do not feed you they do not love you).  I don't know if anyone has done studies about this, but I wonder whether in Spain (as opposed to elsewhere) men are more resistant to doing an equal share of cooking and less resistant to doing other forms of housework in the interests of gender equality because food is fraught in a way that cleaning or laundry is not.  I could be totally wrong of course (and the Basque country at least has a long and proud tradition of all male cooking - and eating - societies), but the song makes me wonder.

If "Cocidito madrileño" were the only food song at San Isidro it would be just an outlier.  But there was another one which is explicitly about San Isidro, and which my Madrid friend confessed she had never really listened to the lyrics to, which has an amazing amount of food lyrics also.  I recorded it during the Día de San Isidro, unfortunately at a distance, so mostly what you see the crowds moving around the pradera.  As they didn't announce the title and author (or I didn't catch it) and I haven't been able to find it online, I don't know the date or circumstances of composition, but I think the food fixation is pretty impressive.  (I've tried to transcribe as much of the lyrics as I could get below, but there are some lacunae where I couldn't make it out.)

This is one of the rare explicitly religious songs too.  My recording (pretty close to the beginning of the song though I missed the intro) begins with an invocation to the saint:

Hoy te pedimos, y suplicamos,
que nos proteges a tu Madrid
San Isidro, tú, eres el patrón,
San Isidro, tú, el gran labrador.

(We ask and plead today that you protect your Madrid, San Isidro, you are our patron, San Isidro, the great laborer.)

This is a pretty straightforward prayer.  But then the lyrics shift immediately to talking about the Día de San Isidro and a theme emerges:

Con unos churros, con chocolate,
con un cocido buen ..........
compartiremos nuestra alegría 
nos ................
y si el Santo, nuestro abogado
que nos enseñes a compartir
hoy te pedimos y suplicamos
ser generosos y hacer vivir.

One could dismiss the churros, chocolate and cocido as being a sort of general evocation of the spirit of the fiesta, and a concrete reminder (as the verse ends) of things to be shared in order to be "generous and life giving."  But then food comes back right away in the next verse:

Con nuestros callos, y limonada
con los ... que está a .....
renovaremos nuestra energía
y te invitaremos a ser feliz 
y si el santo, nuestro abogado,
hoy te pedimos con frenesí,
a todos nosotros, y a toda España,
que nos proteges hasta morir.

Callos a la madrileña is another typical dish (callos are tripe, and its roughly like fried liver).  Lemonade and so on to "renew our energy" seems a bit of overkill, considering we just had cocido and churros and chocolate in the last verse.

So the more or less official hymn to San Isidro, which prays in equal parts for protection and for the ability to be generous and kind to others and happy, ends up systematically listing churros y chocolate, cocido, callos, and limonada (and possibly one other food in the last verse that I couldn't make out) as being essential components of happiness, generosity, and protection.  No argument, of course, since food is essential to happiness and well being, but I think San Isidro is charmingly aware of this.

As I said, my friend had warned me that standing on line for cocido wasn't worth it, so we went searching for a place to eat around lunch time among the line of food stalls which were more or less all doing some sort of grilled meat (except for the places specializing in drinks, which were mostly selling every flavor of mojito including "marijuana flavor").  Naturally, since everyone else was doing the same thing, we ended up standing on line for an hour to get take out food from one place.  Fortunately, there were jazz musicians who were wandering the tents busking who provided some entertainment.

"Hit the Road Jack" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" aren't precisely culturally appropriate, but Madrid continues its happy tradition of appropriation, and the music was welcome.  Most of the food stalls were selling anything that could be grilled or fried (paella, sardinas, calamares, sausages, ribs, etc. etc.), and were also advertising the traditional "entresijos y gallinejas" which my Madrid friend firmly passed on because she thinks they're gross.  For the record, entresijos are lamb intestines, and gallinejas are tripe of either lamb or chickens (gallinas).  They're fried.  As with cocido, this was originally the meat of scarcity, and a significant number of people happily prefer ribs or chops when available, but the restaurants all seemed to be doing a pretty good business also selling the traditional entresijos and gallinejas too.

The restaurants (as you can see in the video) were all pretty packed, as were the food stalls, so when we did finally get food we did what the majority of people did, which was go and sit on the grass to eat it.  (Note backs of food stalls in photo, and people darkening the grass in the foreground.)  The Parque San Isidro, and indeed the "pradera" in general is on a very steep hill, which is rather a pain to climb on a bicycle, but which provides an unexpected explanation of why this particular site is a favorite centuries old picnic spot: if you are not a person accustomed to doing yoga and generally sitting on the ground, sitting on a fairly steep slant and extending your legs out in front of you is much more comfortable than sitting on flat ground, because it mimics a chair.  (Goya's majos were probably among the first generations to take advantage of this, and it might not even have bothered his majas.  As the Cervantes museum in Alcalá de Henares points out, up until at least the seventeenth century, while Spanish men used chairs as a symbol of authority or to align themselves with European counterparts, Spanish women maintained the Muslim custom of sitting on cushions on the floor.  Hence the Sleeping Beauty spinning wheels in other parts of Europe, designed for someone sitting on a stool, are replaced by lower models that look more like the ones made famous by Gandhi in Siglo de Oro Spain.  Possibly also leading to a reputation for gracefulness, since sitting on the floor is a lot more healthy than on chairs.)  In any case, nowadays Spain is firmly a chair culture, but due to a general level of good health among the population and a nice friendly slant, people have no problem sitting for hours on the hill, though they do tend to all face in the same direction, like seagulls looking into the wind at the beach.

Naturally there are balloon sellers, and during the performance there was one enterprising vendor walking among the people selling beer and cold water, like the vendors on the beach, but in general the picnic aspect of San Isidro remains remarkably un-commercialized.  Some people buy food and sit on the grass as we did, but some people also genuinely bring picnics from home.  (Those would be people with small children who cannot risk waiting on line for an hour.)

Similarly, while my friend is not a fan of entresijos and gallinejas, it must be said that in terms of pure junk food, the traditional part of San Isidro is fairly healthy.  (Ok, there are the donut-like cookies that are the "rosquillos del Santo," and of course heladitos, but aside from pure desserts.)  That which is not grilled is fried, but it's pretty good stuff, certainly the little fishies (pescaíto, which really is "little fishy") which I ate.  (I might also have had paella with some ribs in it.  Greasy, but delicious.)

The same is less true of the fairgrounds above the Avenida Quince de Mayo, where of course in addition to all the usual games (ring tosses and shooting matches and so on), and lotteries, and bouncy castles, and rides, there are all the usual junk food stalls, with ice cream and hot dogs, and cotton candy, and other dubious fairground foods which are international and cheerful.

Obviously, the fairgrounds reminded me of the much loved Semana Negra, just as the public serving of cocido reminded me of the newer (but delicious) tradition of the comida pantagruelica of the Celsius 232, which serves fabada to all participants from a truly giant cauldron on the last day of the festivities.  It must be said that in general seeing San Isidro, the ferociously anti-clerical party of the Semana Negra starts to make sense.

Just as the heart of the Semana Negra are the books and quite serious discussions and political stuff hidden among the fairgrounds, there is somewhere hidden among the food and fairgrounds and music and dancing and concerts, an actual open air mass, and of course the alleged holy well of San Isidro.  This is the competition for the Semana, and it's had centuries of practice, as well as political and institutional support (in a practical financial way but also in terms of things like declaring a public holiday).  I understand why Semaneros feel a little under siege (though I still say San Isidro is nothing like as creepy and weird as Semana Santa).

Still, it's also easy to see the Semana Negra and the Celsius and so on as completely growing out of the San Isidro-type tradition of verbenas, and not just because all the fairground rides are the same.  Americans who come to the Semana Negra and the Celsius tend to say "why can't we have this?" and be charmed, but the only US equivalent is really a State Fair, and while those can be lovely, they exist more or less for the pure purpose of fellowship and entertainment.  The US doesn't quite have the tradition of massive open air events of food, fellowship, and fun for a deadly serious purpose.  (In the case of Semana Santa, of course, literally deadly.)  One of my early blog entries was called "serious fun" and one of the things I've always thought was nice about Spain was how seriously they take fiestas, usually because the fiestas have an underlying ideological purpose.  If you export just the fiesta (the rides, the games, the food, the concert) it's very nice and cheerful, and people have a good time, but it's lacking the urgent motivation of most Spanish open-air parties.  And without that it doesn't have quite the same liveliness.  As the devil says in The Bandwagon in the midst of explosions of sulphur and brimstone: "Your cue is, 'Dance, fools!  Dance!"  You have to dance for or against something for the dance to have meaning.  And cocido and churros y chocolate are delicious under any circumstances (unless you're kosher or vegetarian), but they have more meaning against a background of starvation.

In that sense, it's appropriate that the closest US holiday in the calendar (and in the predilection for outdoor barbecue) to San Isidro is probably Memorial Day, running a close second to July 4th, both of which (like San Isidro) function as the unofficial beginning of summer, and a season of vacation and happiness and warm weather, which is absolutely celebrated with grilled meat and fireworks.  Mostly, they're times for outdoor barbecues and heartfelt relief that the school year is over or almost over.  But underlying the cheerfulness of a summer puente are serious and even sad commemorations.  Which is why the fireworks bang all the louder.

So it's maybe appropriate to end my San Isidro musings (which have gotten quite long, apologies again to all those of you who weren't interested in a three part saga), with how I went peacefully home at the end of the Día de San Isidro, and arrived around 10:00 PM, just after sunset, and collapsed happily on my couch.  I had a (very light) supper, and was just cleaning up when I heard a series of loud bangs.  It was exactly midnight.  I'd been planning to skip the fireworks, but they sounded so close that I couldn't help hurrying to my back window (which looks out over my patio, which faces toward the Parque San Isidro), and sure enough, the sky was lit up.  I missed some of the lower fireworks, which were blotted out by buildings in front of me, but I got the better part of a truly impressive display (as elaborate as July 4th or New Years in New York), that lasted for over 15 minutes, and involved lots of trick fireworks that made heart shaped patterns, and exploded into sparkles and so on.  My camera battery was absolutely dead and my cell phone is really isn't good enough to deal with that kind of photography, but here are a few valedictory San Isidro photos, to give a sense of what it looked like.  Enjoy.  And a belated happy San Isidro.