“When the count was about to die, he ordered that he be buried next to his second wife, next to the lady, and that this soul brush be placed at the foot of the tomb in memory of the crime he had committed. ” This sentence is part of a dialogue between the actors José María Caffarel and Julio Núñez in the film the housedirected by Chicho Ibáñez Serrador in 1966, in the series Stories to keep you up at night of Spanish Television. Although stories like this, linked to fear and death, have had a huge impact on the Spanish channel, some of their terms are incomprehensible today. What does Caffarel mean when he talks about this “drilling brush”? The current ignorance of rituals as deeply rooted in the rural world as the cult of blessed souls has a date of origin, the middle of the last century, and a set of well-defined reasons: the appearance of television, literacy and emigration. ended with traditions transmitted orally.
The analysis corresponds to Juan Francisco Blanco, researcher and former director of the Institute of Identities, based in Salamanca. For decades he has consolidated a personal theory that might surprise many: “Even if Spanish culture is presented as vitalist, deep down it hides that we are a culture of death.” The professor refers to obvious examples, known to all, such as the celebration, from north to south, of Holy Week, where “we delight in pain, we are more interested in Christ who bleeds than in him who comes back to life. » or in the celebration of animal sacrifice. Apart from rituals such as bullfights or the slaughter of pigs, some towns still maintain a softened version (without death) of celebrations linked to male initiation, such as cockfights.
Today, what was so familiar and natural, especially in cities, has been left aside and only a few emerging phenomena, such as necrotourism, have taken over. This type of tourism – which consists of guided tours of cemeteries to see the locations of famous tombs and other curiosities – is already an ancient activity in large capitals, such as Paris or Prague, and today it is presented in our culture as an excellent opportunity. , not only to deepen knowledge of the past, but also to try to break the solid taboo that society has built around death.
The “contact of souls”
Either way, when current generations approach celebrations that only survive in part of inland Spain – in the cities of Galicia, León, Zamora, Salamanca or Extremadura – something is wrong. The cult of blessed souls was greatly strengthened at the Council of Trent (16th century), which gave rise to a multitude of soul brotherhoods (organizations responsible for the funerals of their deceased members and praying for their souls) and other particularly striking rites , like mozas de animas.
“There is a cultural fossil of this custom in the town of La Alberca, Salamanca, where a woman goes out into the street at sunset praying for blessed souls, although this phenomenon existed throughout the Sierra de Francia and in the region of Las Hurdes, in the north of Extremadura”, explains the expert, who was able to confirm this reality after analyzing the famous survey of the Ateneo de Madrid, which questioned Spaniards about their birth customs, of marriage and death in the years 1901 and 1902.
During the celebration of Samaín, the Celts believed that a great door was opened between the world of the living and the world of the dead, a space stimulated by the consumption of alcohol as a ritual element.
This examination of the data revealed the roots in much more rural Spain of celebrations linked to death, such as devotion to souls. Repeated accounts speak of the habit of people going out at night to pray to the deceased, while the ringing of bells was common in the late afternoon – coinciding with the end of the working day – to remember the dead . A contact which, moreover, was called “contact of souls”. “We are talking about a traditional culture where death was perfectly anchored in daily life and was part of the landscape: the dead were kept awake at home and children could run around the room around the body of the deceased,” explains Juan Francisco White.
If today it is obvious that death is a taboo, in the past the relationship was closer, without however reaching the philosophy of ancestral cultures. For example, we know that during the celebration of Samhain, the Celts believed that a great door opened between the world of the living and the world of the dead, a space stimulated by the consumption of alcohol as a ritual element. Older people surely remember the customs of the Night of the Dead in the villages, which were practiced by the young men, such as ringing or “donning” the bells. “There are documents from the 18th and 19th centuries that show that our ancestors believed that the sound of bells functioned as a kind of acoustic wall against the spirits of the dead,” Blanco explains. That is to say the complete opposite of the Celts.
It is true that certain towns in emptied Spain still retain the echo of these traditions so deeply rooted in the past. Even if it is in art and heritage, as in a large part of Spain which has left it, that they are best preserved. Just look at the city churches and their roads. When it believed in the existence of purgatory, the Church promoted a very precise and abundant iconography of the cult of souls. As reflected in the works of Juan Francisco Blanco, author of the book Sleeping death. Funerary culture in traditional Spain (University of Valladolid, 2005), the depiction of souls trying to escape the burning fire of hell with their great mediator, the Virgin of Carmen, was common.
Disappearing chapels
The other incontestable memory of the cult of the souls of the deceased remains, bruised, on many northern roads, and is particularly common in Asturias and Galicia (where the Celtic substrate is more present). These are the chapels of souls, small altars located at crossroads and often built by individuals. Inside they housed a brush for collecting alms, which were used to celebrate masses in memory of the deceased and to maintain the buildings themselves. The architect Juan Pedrayes Obaya defines them, in a small study, as very poor elements, of popular construction, with common characteristics, such as a cross painted inside, accompanied by the motto “Pray to God for the souls in purgatory “.
We must fight against the tide, these chapels are part of our culture, our myths and our history; If they disappear, we will have lost part of our cultural heritage
Juan Pedrayes Obaya
— architect
“The future of these small chapels is certainly difficult, devotion to souls tends to disappear,” underlines the architect, in reference to the altars analyzed in the Asturian town of Villaviciosa. However, there are other, much more worrying reasons for this possible extinction. The theft of alms discouraged the families who were responsible for maintaining them, while the funds needed to collect the funds were withdrawn. “We have to fight against the tide, these chapels are part of our culture, our myths and our history; If they disappear, we will have lost part of our cultural heritage which, ultimately, belongs to all the inhabitants of Villavicios”, he reflects, in a local context which, with certainty, can be extrapolated to others architectural manifestations of this nature in the north of the country.
More popular and in an impeccable state of conservation is the famous ossuary in the church of Santa María de la O, in the town of Wamba in Valladolid. There, the temple guide service presents the space, which preserves the skeletal remains of nearly 3,000 people, dating from the 9th to the 17th centuries, as “a chapel of souls”. Juan Francisco Blanco believes that, even if it may have served to recall the souls of the deceased, the chapel attached to the temple of Visigothic origin is, in reality, only a “non-chaotic” ossuary, i.e. say with thousands of bones assembled. covering its walls. It should be remembered that until the end of the 18th century, the deceased were buried in churches. Later, after the decree of Charles III (1777), this practice was prohibited and the situation led to the creation of cemeteries, in the ossuaries of which ancient or anonymous remains were stored to avoid the collapse of the space.
The missing link
Despite the deep roots of death-related traditions in rural Spain – which intensified each year around this time – the cult of souls eventually declined after the mid-20th century. Juan Francisco Blanco explains that the appearance in 1956 of television, to which city residents had access through teleclubs “even if they were not connected by road” had a perverse effect: “These people started watching different forms of television on television.” to eat, to express themselves, to dance… and this led them to be ashamed of themselves and, what is worse, to reject their own identity. ”
Television, however, came with other determining factors, such as emigration. This rural Spain, encouraged by the Franco regime, began to abandon the cities to work in the industrialized centers of the Basque Country and Catalonia, thus opening a generational fissure. “The oral tradition that has kept these rituals alive functions like a chain, from generation to generation; If a link is broken, guidelines are somehow established so that all this inheritance disappears,” says the expert. The literacy process begun in the 1930s with the Second Republic constitutes the third of these ingredients. “Youth culture was what they inherited from their parents and grandparents; When they start going to school, children learn new things and start to put that heritage aside,” adds Blanco.
But, beyond the daughter of the soul of La Alberca, the ringing of the bells of certain villages and the bas-reliefs where souls suffer the fire of winter, are there other living vestiges of these beliefs? After a decade of traveling through the cities of Castile and León, Juan Francisco Blanco reveals much more than an anecdote. “Instead of using an alarm clock or the telephone alarm, there are still elderly people who entrust themselves to blessed souls to wake up; Everyone I’ve talked to tells me their soul has never failed them.
