Corpus Christi

Next Thursday is Corpus Christi, one of the three Thursdays that shinemore than the sun, as the Castilians say. Of the three Thursdays, none are holidays anymore. Holy Thursday has become queues of cars and packed roads for the start of Holy Week, which has been reduced to three days, or four, depending on the place. Holy Thursday, which is the feast of the Last Supper, of the institution of the Eucharist, of the piece of bread dipped in the lamb's sauce and which points out the traitor, etc., Holy Thursday has ceased to be a holiday precisely because it is a Thursday. And Corpus Christi, which was instituted because the incomprehensible wonder of the Eucharist, of the incredible Transubstantiation, was overshadowed by the prayer in the garden, by the arrest of Jesus, by the kiss of Judas and the severed ear—in other words, by the entire Passion. The joy of the Last Supper was left without a worthy and specific feast to celebrate it worthily. And the third Thursday, the Ascension, had never had much standing as a popular festival, because who celebrates a farewell, even with the promise of a return? In short, none of the three Thursdays are celebrated anywhere, except perhaps Corpus Christi, which in Berga has been turned into fire and smoke and dancing monsters, amid fire and firecrackers.

The feast of Corpus Christi was instituted to solemnly celebrate a gift as precious as the Eucharist. And since it was a new feast, they found they didn't have the necessary texts for the liturgy. The Pope entrusted them to the two Catholic luminaries of the time: Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure. Legend has it that as Saint Thomas read his texts before the Pope, Saint Bonaventure tore up those he had written. I don't know. It could very well be. The fact is that the precious Pange language of the Dominican Aquinas.

As often happens, theological festivals soon make a pact with popular customs and thus become contaminated with traditions intended to celebrate other things. The fact that the Catholic Church decided to hold a procession to display the Eucharist preceded the custody of the entire usual bestiary of other urban revelries. In Girona, for example, which is my town and which, therefore, I remember well, the dwarfs and giants and the municipal eagle came out in the Corpus Christi procession of those times. And the streets were covered with carpets (when I was little we used to say it carpets) of flowers. Damasks were hung on the balconies (at that time we called them hangings and Spanish flags proliferated). And to make matters worse, people threw streamers and confetti, just like at any other festival. Also, when the martyrdom, which was municipal property, passed by, people threw flower petals and broom. In fact, broom was the flower of Corpus Christi. It was perfumed gold and covered the asphalt or the cobblestones and fell from the sky in an unforgettable rain. The Corpus Christi procession in Girona was exclusively for men. The women were in charge of throwing flowers as the monstrance passed, from balconies and windows or at street level.

In Girona, we didn't dance the egg or have monsters like patums, or mulasas or guitas. We were much more serious, perhaps a little too much. The soldiers paraded at the end of the entire procession, and with their shiny, freshly closed boots, they stepped on the carnations and broom of the carpets. A special smell was produced, vegetal and already somewhat putrid, which mingled with that of the hot feces of the horses, who, poor things, innocent of what we humans celebrated, released it wherever and whenever. All this mingles in my memory with the imposing sound of the bells, with the chords of the cathedral organ, with the sticky, narcotic smell of the flowering linden trees on the rambla. The adults carried aches and the children carried candles, the wax dripping onto our shoes. We sang Lauda Sion Salvatorem and also, they were Franco times, Let us sing to the love of all loves. And when we passed in front of the Pia Almoina, which was then the Piarist school, the girls leaned out of the Gothic windows and we children were filled with a special longing. Corpus Christi was the prologue to summer, to naked flesh, to the sea and the salt on the skin.

Now what has become of all that? It has been lost like so many other things and people rush to the beaches, crowd together, bathe in waters that are not very clean, take their boats and invade the coves that were once secret, empty and silent. The world turns, turns, and it does so tirelessly, full of misfortunes, wars, hunger, ruins and deaths.