If Lent comes early, Palm Sunday will also come early. As soon as tomorrow. And if Palm Sunday comes so early, it means that, in fact, we are already in Holy Week. Well, now all this is hardly noticed. Yes, we still go to bless four laurel branches and someone still carries a long and straight palm branch, but, of the whole week, only Good Friday is a holiday. Saturday, which was previously called Glory and is now called Saint, is always a holiday, and Easter Monday, which people mistakenly call the “dia de la mona” (the day of the Easter cake), joins Friday and they make a festive long weekend that people take advantage of to travel, ski and, the most daring, undress and sunbathe on the beach. Before, when I was young, all of Holy Week was a holiday, more or less. Especially from Thursday onwards.
But it all began on Palm Sunday. In Girona, at home, we would go up to the cathedral to bless the palm branch (the girls, the palm). The mass, in fact, the pontifical service, was long, because at the time of the Gospel the passion according to Saint Matthew was read in full. Beforehand, the bishop had blessed palms and palm branches, laurel and olive. So the whole thing lasted a good couple of hours. On leaving, in the gentle April sunshine, known families would greet each other, chat, and visit. We children would run from one place to another, around the well that still presides over the Plaça dels Apòstols. Palm Sunday was the day to go and congratulate godparents, and they, gratefully, would give you a tortell. In Girona, the Palm Sunday tortell was more important than the mona, which, according to my grandfather and godfather, was a Barcelona thing, even though he would also give me a mona on Easter Sunday. The tortell was immense, at least that's how I remember it. It was a good meter in diameter, filled with marzipan and dusted with icing sugar. It would dry out little by little, and we had tortell to dip in our coffee with milk for breakfast all week. On Easter Sunday, you would congratulate your godfather again, and he, gratefully, would give you a mona. Easter Sunday was the day of the mona. Not Monday, as they say now. Chocolate predominated in the monas. Sometimes, a large chocolate egg would preside over the mona, resting on a sponge cake, cream or butter, and chopped almond base. Little by little, came the invasion of figurines, according to the fashion of fairy tales or Walt Disney movies… Snow White, Dumbo, Mickey Mouse, etc. My godfather probably didn't like these figurines much, because one year, I have a very vivid memory of it, he gave me a hermitage made entirely of croquant. It was of considerable size and the walls were a good centimeter thick.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were normal days. No school, that is. We didn't go to mass. Since the passion according to Saint John was reserved for Good Friday, on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I don't remember which day each one, the remaining two were read. So, for Holy Week, all four passions were read: Saint Matthew, Saint Mark, Saint Luke, and Saint John.
Holy Week used to be in April. The days were getting longer, and since, more or less, it had rained, the landscape had turned green. The fields, a more vivid green; the trees, a tender green, a bit watery, without substance. The hawthorn hedges turned white and gave off that honey smell that perfumed you when you got close. The asparagus pushed upwards from the base of the asparagus plant that framed them with its dark, spiky green. The three so-called neutral days before Maundy Thursday were perfect for going for a walk in Sant Daniel, to soak in the changes of color in the world and to embrace that joy of nature that so little matched the immediate days that awaited us. Because the passion and death of Jesus awaited us. We followed everything punctually. Processions, manaies, visits to the monuments that were held in each church… Everything was done in silence, with a certain seriousness. But everything passed quickly. As you know, days pass quickly, Holy Week holidays lasted four days and we had to return to the heavy routine of classes. The curious thing is that we spent the whole week dwelling on death, and the Resurrection, the most important thing, the foundation of all Christian faith, we barely paid attention to. We finished it in two days. And even then, Easter Monday was a more rather secular festival. Gatherings, barbecues, excursions to nearby hermitages. And the remains of the Easter cake from the day before. Now there is nothing left of all this. Perhaps for the best…
