A WEEKEND IN MAZAGÓN

This weekend I have gone to Mazagón, which is a small village placed 18 kilometres away from Huelva. In this village once a year there is a party or as they call it, "romería" in order to honour the Virgin of Carmen who is the Patron Saint of sailors. As a sailor village people there love and venerate this Virgin. They have a lot of songs about her.

The "romería" takes three days. Women wear a different "tradicional" dress each day, the first day they wear the new one and the other two days those that have been worn in previous years. Each dress costs from 80 to 100 euros if you make it and if you have to buy it you will have to pay from 300 (out of season) from 600 or 700 euros (from this season). No-one women, including kids, wore other clothes just me, of course.

The first day consists of walking 7 kilometres with the Virgin. The way takes 5 or 6 hours and during the way some people go by car and all kind of vehicles following the Virgin. In the vehicles there is a lot of food because at the middle of the way they stop to eat.



The other days there are different celebrations. In this celebration each person goes with her/his group in a "caseta" and spend the day eating, drinking, dancing sevillanas and singing. It is a show.



It is an experience you have to live because it is very difficult to explain how it goes and the feeling of the people.

Last day there is a mass to say goodbye and the next weekend they are going to do the 7 kilometres again to return the Virgin to her place.

To sum up, the most shocking things for me are two: it is amazing how much religious they are and the fact that it doesn't matter if they spend all the year paying for this party, it is just a weekend and they have to celebrate it although a lot of them don't earn enough to cover the expences. So, they have to save a bit of money each month to pay for it.

Of course, each person has his own preferences about how spending the money, don't they?