The fiestas of the patron saint of Madrid mark the unofficial beginning of summer here. And obviously living in the "Barrio San Isidro" I couldn't miss them, right?
About a month ago I started seeing the signs going up around the city...
Clearly, San Isidro was going to be something of a big deal.
Then my neighborhood (which is the Barrio San Isidro, thanks to the nearby presence of the "Ermita del Santo" with the supposedly miraculous well, and also Tanatorio San Isidro and the Parque San Isidro, which leads to the Pradera San Isidro) started getting prepared with little banners....
...And signs prepared for illumination...
I decided to do a final mad push to finish my thesis chapter before May 15 (another reason for my not blogging), and to make San Isidro a day to celebrate the achievement of a chapter draft, and a chance to celebrate with a clear conscience.
Before getting into the details of the celebrations, I should explain about San Isidro, for those of you who haven't tuned in earlier, or whose ear I haven't bent about him. San Isidro Labrador (that's "the laborer" or "the peasant," not the cute dog breed) is the patron saint of Madrid, which is (as Madrid's current mayor pointed out in her address opening the ceremonies) a bit of an odd choice, since he's a distinctively rural saint for the largest city in Spain, and he is "sun reddened and hard-handed from work" (I quote the mayor the again) in a city that basically has always existed as a courtly capital and a seat of government. One could see this as a classic example of the Madison Avenue principle of advertising (and one wouldn't be wrong), but on the other hand, as the mayor pointed out, Madrid is a city of "gente que vino del campo," swelled by internal migration, and with a strong tradition of a proud working class. So a worker saint, who actually came originally from the countryside and settled in Madrid, is kind of the perfect emblem. Also, and perhaps more seriously, most of San Isidro's alleged miracles involve water and wells, either finding them (see miraculous well), or making water rise (as in the story of how his prayers rescued his infant son who had fallen into a well, and was delivered to its brim by miraculously rising waters which lifted the child out on a kind of geyser "paddling its little hands as if it were in the bath" according to the touching narrative in the under-rated Museo de Orígenes which is built on the alleged site of the palace of the feudal lord for whom San Isidro supposedly worked as a serf). In spite of the temporary green of springtime, this is a desert country, and saints who can do good things with water are seriously appreciated.
I've said for years that had the Spanish Republicans who made Madrid's resistance during the Civil War iconic had a shade more sense of humor or a shade less integrity about their anti-clericalism they would have co-opted San Isidro as (St.) Isidro the Laborer, as opposed to Saint Isidro (the Laborer) and would have saved themselves a lot of trouble in terms of accusations about burning convents and so on. Apparently, their descendants (at least Madrid's mayor Manuela Carmena and her Ahora Madrid coalition) have finally gotten the message, and are cheerfully recalling that the patron of Madrid was a worker and a peasant, and was famous for nice things like rescuing babies and finding water to irrigate the fields, as opposed to chopping people's heads off because they were infidels (which let's face it is what most medieval saints are known for, certainly Spain's patron Santiago).
My Madrid Complutense mentor (who in fairness is a specialist in late medieval and early modern literature) says with cynical bitterness that San Isidro beat out Santa Teresa de Avila as a patron saint in the seventeenth century (when Isidro was canonized after a concerted push from Felipe II who was trying to get a local saint for the backwater he had just declared capital of the largest empire in the world) because being a peasant was considered a guarantee of limpieza de sangre, so Isidro was unquestionably a cristiano viejo, whereas Santa Teresa was unquestionably not. That might be true at the national level in terms of the struggle for precedence between Santiago and Santa Teresa (Castilians still resent that Santiago beat out their local candidate, as I discovered during the cathedral tour in Salamanca), but I feel that it's not necessarily the case with San Isidro in Madrid. He's an amiable sort of fellow (which Santa Teresa was unquestionably not), and I think he represents Madrid much better than any of the obnoxious crusader saints, be they never so intellectual.
In any case, given that San Isidro is associated with the outskirts of Madrid (specifically the church of Santa María la Antigua, that I've blogged about before, as well as the miraculous well over which the Ermita del Santo was constructed), a lot of the celebrations for the Día de San Isidro traditionally take place right in my neighborhood, which was historically outside of Madrid. Specifically, according to the Madrid friend who kindly accompanied me (granted she said she wouldn't miss "las fiestas de mi ciudad" anyway, but she was good company), the tradition on San Isidro is to go and have a picnic in the Pradera de San Isidro, which until quite recently was open countryside which sloped down to the Manzanares river on the far side of Madrid from the city, next to the Ermita del Santo. (If prado is field or meadow, then pradera is "plain" or "prairie." Zane Gray's book Riders of the Purple Sage is translated as Jinetes de la pradera roja, That is today's fun fact.)
Actually, technically (as one of my bachata classmates at the polideportivo explained to me the week before the festivities), the religious tradition of San Isidro is to go and stand on line (a loooong line) to get into the "Ermita" (which is usually closed during the year), and get a drink of the holy water from the miraculous well, and then buy a bottle of said holy water from the approved vendors for the year to come, and receive a blessing. (Those faithful blog readers who are also Terry Pratchett fans will obviously think of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler in relation to buying bottles of holy water, but I think the culturally relevant reference here is probably Luis Berlanga's early film Los Jueves, Milagro about a group of businessmen who figure out a way to drum up business for their local holy well, which a long and bitter fight with the on-set Franquista censor who kept re-writing scenes managed to bludgeon into something Frank Capra would have made with more faith in the Box Office than the church, but which still retains a bitter outline worthy of Leonardo Sciascia.)
In any case, obviously after trekking all the way out from Madrid, and standing on line for healing water (which according to my San Isidro companion probably obtained its holy reputation partly because it's highly mineralized and thus like the famous waters of Bath is fairly unpleasant tasting if drunk at room temperature, though very good for digestive disorders) people are tired, and want to eat, hence the tradition of eating on the grass. And obviously after eating on the grass, if it's a beautiful warm spring day (which it was, with temperatures starting around 17 C or 65 F, and rising to around 25/80) the next thing you do is fall asleep on the grass and have a nice siesta. And after that you've received a blessing and had a nice meal and a nice siesta and it's the nicest part of the day, so obviously you make music and dance until dark (or considerably after dark), because it's a holiday. Such is the venerable San Isidro tradition, and these semi-religious picnic/outdoor games/dance parties, or verbenas to give them their proper name, occur with suspicious frequency between May and September. Santiago is July 25, which is convenient to his native Galicia but nowhere else in Spain because it's really too hot to party during the day. But San Antonio is June 15, and my Madrid friend has already told me to reserve the date. And in August there's the verbena de (la virgen de) la Paloma, which is famous because of a zarzuela (late 19th C comic opera, roughly contemporaneous with Gilbert and Sullivan) called La verbena de la Paloma (which obviously takes place then).
So that's the background for San Isidro, some of which I knew and some of which I gathered in the first weeks of May as the posters and decorations went up. When I headed to meet friends at the British Cemetery (one of my favorite hidden jewels of the neighborhood), I noticed that the large open area in the Parque San Isidro usually reserved for informal volleyball games on weekends had a giant Ferris Wheel and several carnival rides being constructed. This gave me a hint that the festivities were about to take over the park.
And then on the Saturday before San Isidro a friend called and said that there was a procession of traditional dancers and a "verbena" and also a parade of cabezudos (the standard translation is "giant heads") in the city center, running from the Plaza de la Opera to the church of San Francisco el Grande, past the royal palace, and did I want to go. So obviously I said yes. And thus began my San Isidro adventures, related in the next thrilling installment of this blog....
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