Summer Solstice in El Acebrón

El Palacio de El Acebrón is a neo-Palladian Palace built in the 1960s in the middle of Doñana Natural Park, already mentioned en passant in a previous post, Strangers on the Shore.

Sunset at El Acebrón with its chapel on our right. Note that for all its
pretence of grandeur, it rather lacks depth. It's really nothing more than a
glorified shed - the only thing missiing was the dried bag of cement to sit on
while supping your tea.

Today, the palace is an interpretation centre for the National Park and is quite a surprising sight - definitely not typically Spanish. Seeing a building that would not be amiss on a Pink Panther film set certainly  takes you aback.

The Palace's history is rather strange: it was built by a wealthy landownwer, Luis Espinosa Fondevilla. Luis was a very charitable man. This and his obsession with the palace finally ruined him as he poured all of his fortune into helping others and the rather ill-conceived construction of El Acebrón. While the ground floor boasts brilliant marble floors, a hugely ornate fireplace and a red marble staircase, the first floor was a poor, unfinished space, the roof made of sheets of corrugated asbestos.

In fact, the palace was never really finished and Luis died in November 1975, the same month and year as Franco's demise. Even before then his precarious financial situation had forced him to sell up to a local paper mill, who took over the stands of eucalytpus that had been his main source of income. He was allowed to stay on and live out his final years in his folly. The Palace was abandonded until 1982 when it was bought by the State and refurbished - including the installation of a proper flat roof.

According the the building's caretaker and researcher, the building boasts over 360 mystic and religious symbols, starting with the scroll on the pediment with the letters LEF - the initials of both the owner and of the French Revolution's motto: Liberté Egalité, Fraternité, which are also Masonic watchwords. I must add, however, that I do have certain problems with symbolism. Just like literature and the myriad allusions to be found therein, I think that a lot of such insertions are just coincidence and/or put there because they are pretty or just barefaced flourishes to make a work more "interesting", more "profound".

What the Butler Saw? Men in pinnies holding
hands. 

Luis was rumoured to be gay, as members of the household staff were not unused to elcoming quite large groups of exclusively male visitors who held strange rituals in the chapel. Indeed, rumour among people who remember that time has it that these mysterious men were even seen wearing aprons and holding hands - something not unknown in any Masonic Lodge. There is, however, no documentary evidence to support this - hardly surprising given the fact that we are talking about events in Francoist Spain.

Sunset in the the formerly grand 

gardens.

So to the present. On June 21st the Palace was the scene of Regular Masonic Lodge Itálica 107's Summer Solstice celebration.  First, the Summer Solstice ceremony was held in the chapel, now used as a space for audiovisual presentations on Doñana. After the Solemn Ritual, we all enjoyed a talk on astronomy, including a session of stargazing on the flat roof, before going down to a buffet dinner in the dining room.

Looking towards a dingly dell.

All in all, it was not a very enjoyable night. This next part is a rewrite following my decision to leave the Lodge: Well OK, maybe it wasn't.  Everybody split off into little cliques - quite amusing really to see exclusive groups inside a rather exclusive organisation based on values brotherhood and equality. I think that this night was when I started to reconsider my commitment to Freemasonry - at least to this particular self-congratulatory Lodge that seems to be run for the greater glory of a select few. For example, we chose to park in the designated car park and not outside the house itself. At the end of the night,  it would have been, in my eyes at least,  logical if my so called "Brethren" had offered us a lift to the car park 500 metres down a sandy track instead of driving by seemingly blind to the fact that they were choking us with dust and that perhaps we would have said yes to such an offer. 

It is the first time that I can claim to have dined in a palace- one that on reflection seems to be a metaphor for Italica 107 - seemingly quite magnificent and welcoming, yet one that, beneath the stucco and atrezzo is nothing more than an overblown, if somewhat shallow shed.    For more pictures of this architectural folly, go to this blog. 

And of course, the whole event had nothing in common with Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut! 

No goats or chickens were sacrificed in the making of this entry - although a lot of  crustaceans were indeed boiled alive previous to the proceedings. And jolly tasty prawns they were too! it's a pity that the company didn't live up to the food.

Long Live The White Pigeon!!!

Last weekend (June 21st - 22nd) was the Summer Solstice and we were due to attend a celebration in the Palacio del Acebrón, Doñana (see above). As this is about 200km by road from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, we decided to overnight in the nearby village of El Rocío.

  Ascot comes to El Rocío: the 
  White Pigeon is seen here 
  sporting a rather fetching hat, 

  even though the brim is somewhat
  smaller than the regulatory 4 
  inches minimum demanded of 
  those ladies who want to sashay
  around the Royal Enclosure. Does
  this Lady tell her nags to "move
  yer bleedin'arse!!!"? I wonder. 

Now, this is a really weird place, a virtual ghost town built on sand dunes with no metalled roads. So what is it all about, then? The village of El Rocío has sprung up around a hermitage that is home to the statue of Nuestra Señora del Rocío, Our - or better, Their - Lady of the Dew, aka  La Blanca Paloma, or the White Pigeon; there is no word in Spanish for dove. Many of us of a certain age might remember the disgraced Jonathan King's version of Una Paloma Blanca, although I much prefer the Wurzels' parody.  In Christian symbology, the dove represents the Holy Spirit, which makes this statue's soubriquet quite unique in Christian idolatry. 

Legend had it that some local peasants found a statue of the simpering White Pigeon in the

At home with the White Pigeon. Note the

austere Christian simplicity of the 

knick-knacks.

marshes. This "miracle" was happening all around Spain at the time as wily priests tried to keep their flocks happy by giving them their own Our Lady of... statue - a bit like when football clubs get the occasional Brazilian player (the players are occasional; their performance, at best, rather erratic) to keep up their fans' interest. But I digress. As they started to lug the statue back to Almonte, their local town, miraculously it  got progressively heavier until they had to abandon it and go home for the night. Is it any surprise that an unwieldy lump of wood gets heavier as you carry it through marshland - especially after a hard day's work? When they returned the following day, Lo! The White Pigeon was back in its original place! This to-ing and fro-ing was kept up for a few days until the priest, probably mighty tired of trundling the statue back to where he had hidden it in the first place night after night in his handcart, decreed that the White Pigeon wanted to stay where it was and that a hermitage had to be built on that very site - probably his "nephew" owned the plot. And thus it was.  

One of the 23 horses to die during the 2013 party. Photo courtesy of
ecorepublicano.es 

The El Rocío pilgrimage is now one of the world's largest and there are many confraternities dedicated to the White Pigeon throughout Spain. Each year roughly one million "pilgrims" make their way to the village on foot, horseback, air-conditioned luxury SUV etc., taking one of three recognised routes. The torments and constant sacrifices of this week-long journey are leavened by nightly parties - true Bacchanalia involving sex, drugs, croquette-sized mosquitoes and migraine-inducing Flamenco. Luckily for the participants, the sins of the journey are washed clean by the mass on Sunday.

In the village, there is plenty of space for the rich and ostentatious to prance their horses around. Many of these horses die of exhaustion and are left to bloat and rot in the streets. A sacrifice to the mother of the god of love.

But for the 4x4s, Clint Eastwood

wouldn't look out of place in 

this picture

Anyhow, we reserved a room in a pension for €46. During the pilgrimage it costs €500! After we had unpacked we went for a trudge through the sandy streets where we saw hundreds, literally hundreds, of houses that lie unoccupied more than 300 days of the year. We also saw the cofraternities' houses - if such a term can be used for these enormous buildings, some of which occupy a whole block.

One of the many cofrat houses.

As we can see from the various pictures, this village is a wonderful example of the how Christianity has become corrupt - at least as far as the Roman sect goes. Where now humility, lack of ostentation, wallet-busting charity? The cofraternities often boast of their charitable works. If they were truly charitable, and if the private householders were truly Christian and worthy of the status of pilgrim, they would put their property to better use - summer residences for underprivileged children for example? Better still, they could sell off these highly desirable holiday residences and open soup kitchens for the needy poor of their own cities. They could even - Lord preserve us! - offer up their greatest sacrifice; forgoing their pilgrimage and employing the money saved and the time gained to help the poorer citizens that surround them in their daily lives.

A view along the street to two more cofrat houses.

Hippy squatters take note: you have a whole village to 

occupy and do your "alternative" stuff in while leeching
off the capitalist society that you so noisily reject.

Such hypocrisy. It makes my blood boil!