Corpus Christi is the Catholic holiday in honour of the body of Christ - the Eucharist. It is celebrated throughout Spain and is held in either May or June depending on when Easter occurs. To calculate the next Corpus Christi date, look for the first Thursday after Trinity Sunday (the eighth Sunday after Easter) and you’ll know when the fiesta is set to begin in towns and villages throughout Andalucia. This year it fell on June 20th and in Torrenueva, they really celebrate it.
It is a solemn and magnificent procession which bears the consecrated host through the streets. Although Corpus Christi is celebrated all over Spain, I wanted to bring to your attention the wonderful efforts that are made in a small village hidden away in Don Quijote's countryside: Torrenueva.
I have written about Torrenueva on a few occasions but I really felt the need to share this with all of you as it is a truly breathtaking occasion.
The history of Corpus Christi is particularly interesting as the Catholic kings used it as a tool to Christianise a population that had been under Muslim rule for some eight centuries. According to historical accounts, they even instructed the town halls to invest large sums of money into the fiesta and urged the town to celebrate until they “appeared crazy”.
In the past, all the towns and villages were forced to each supply a specific amount of greenery to carpet the streets. And historically, theatre carts travelled around the towns, following the Corpus Cristi processions and putting on plays, especially in Granada. It seems that it got out of hand at one point and in 1765 King Carlos III officially put a stop to the custom.
Today it is still typical to carpet the streets of towns and villages with greenery for the solemn Corpus Christi processions. This adds a special ambience to the processions. The Corpus Christi parades also tend to attract all the local authorities, and in some cases, military personnel as well.
The neighbours of Torrenueva have always adorned the streets where the procession of the Corpus was passing with flowers, pots, and decorations... but it has been in the last two decades when these streets started to be decorated with carpets of wonderfully colourful sawdust, which are culminated after a long and laborious work by the locals, forming a unique spectacle which attracts visitors from the whole province.
The neighbours with the help of the City Council, get to work by tinting sawdust, preparing fabrics and organising the ornaments they have been preparing for weeks, until the Saturday night before, when they leave everything ready. All the inhabitants donate 2 euros for the sawdust and normally the women get to work tinting it. Not sure what the men do, probably watch from the local bar!
In Torrenueva the neighbours decorate balconies with fabrics, they place altars with religious and biblical motifs, in addition to tinted sawdust, and tinted rock salt and with the help of moulds, they adorn the streets with spectacular carpets of vibrant colours.
The streets remain intact until the procession formed by: altar boys, communion children, priests and their entourage walk over them on what is considered the grand day of Corpus Cristi. Truly a spectacle worth watching if you happen to be in the area. I hope you enjoy the photos from this year's Corpus Cristi 2022.
WOW!