Pilgrimages in Andalusia

El Rocio is a village of sand streets and white houses on the edge of the Doñana marshes, in the municipality of Almonte, Huelva. The shrine stands near the mouth of the Guadalquivir. Brotherhoods come from all eight Andalusian provinces and from further afield, each with a simpecado — the embroidered banner that travels in a decorated cart — and a following of walkers, riders and support vehicles.

Tradition places a chapel of Santa Maria de las Rocinas here after the thirteenth-century Christian conquest. Alfonso XI’s hunting book, in the fourteenth century, already names that chapel. The image was proclaimed patron of Almonte in 1653. The pilgrimage as a Pentecost gathering took its present shape in the eighteenth century. “Celebrated since 1280” is the pious date on postcards, not the first document.

Most hermandades leave their towns on the Wednesday before Pentecost Sunday and spend three or four days on the road, with drums and flutes, sleeping in fields or on the permitted edges of Doñana. Do not treat the park as a free campsite; the routes are marked and the marsh is protected. By Pentecost Monday before dawn the village is full. The men of Almonte then take the Virgin from the shrine and carry her through the streets to the houses of the visiting brotherhoods — the leap, or salto, that is the climax. When that circuit is done she goes back to the hermitage and the long walk home begins.

The other great inland romeria is the Virgen de la Cabeza, on a hill in Sierra Morena above Andujar, Jaen. The weekend is the last of April, a date held since the late Middle Ages (the older feast was in September). About sixty brotherhoods now take part, plus informal groups. The image is known as la Morenita.

Friday is the reception of the visiting cofradias in the town. Saturday is the climb to the sanctuary. Sunday morning is the procession around the hilltop settlement. The old line that the Virgin is “carried more than thirty kilometres” describes the approach to the cerro, not a single non-stop shoulder-carry of that length by one team. Come for the Saturday road and the Sunday hill if you want the pictures; Andujar itself fills from the Thursday.

Lora del Rio, in Seville province, keeps its patron at a sanctuary in the first slopes of Sierra Morena, about twelve kilometres from town. The romeria at the shrine is 8 September. A separate rite, the Venida, brings the image down to Lora when the brotherhood votes for it: an eleven-kilometre walk, the shrine-carriage covered with cloth against the dust, salutes of gunpowder, and stretches of the step auctioned to whoever will pay to carry it. The old text rolled those two journeys into one twelve-hour march. They are not the same day.

San Benito in Obejo is a small mountain pilgrimage with ritual dances to lute, guitar and tambourine — local writers call them war dances. It is a village day, not a second Rocio.

Romeria de los Gitanos, Cabra, falls on the third Sunday of June. Since 1969 it has been the national Gitano gathering at the sanctuary of the Virgen de la Sierra, whom the pilgrims call Majari Kali. Gitano families come from across Spain; non-Gitano neighbours walk too. After mass the image goes on shoulders to the hilltop hermitage. It is a Festival of Tourist Interest of Andalucia. Town context: Cordoba.

In Moclin, Granada, the Cristo del Pano is a painted image, not a carved statue. The pilgrimage brings the painting out; popular belief has long tied it to prayers for fertility. Crowds are in the thousands, not the Rocio scale.

Cazorla, in Jaen, also processes a religious painting rather than a sculpted Virgin. Both are local holy days. Do not expect the infrastructure of Almonte.

Almeria’s patron is the Virgen del Mar. The year’s long rite starts on the first Sunday of January, when she is taken on a flowered carriage to the hermitage at Torre Garcia. She stays there until the last Saturday of August, then comes back to the city — the same week as the Feria of Almeria. Town: Almeria.

16 July is the feast of the Virgen del Carmen, patron of sailors. Almost every fishing town on the Andalusian coast puts her on a boat or carries her into the surf. Horns, decorated vessels, a mass, then the sea. For a visitor staying on the Costa del Sol this is the pilgrimage you can reach without a marsh or a sierra: Malaga’s port, Rincon de la Victoria, Torre del Mar, Nerja, Fuengirola, Marbella, Estepona. The Almeria coast does the same in Garrucha and neighbouring harbours. It is a single evening, not a four-day walk.

January opens Almeria’s Virgin of the Sea. April’s last weekend is Andujar. Pentecost — late May or June — is El Rocio. Mid-June is Cabra. 16 July is the Carmen on the coast. 8 September is Setefilla at her sanctuary. Late August closes Almeria’s return. A wider festive calendar, including fairs that share some of the same weekends, is on Fairs in Andalucia.