Part 4

As the morning wears on and the hours drag by, it worries me how used to the ongoing spectacle I was becoming. I sit at my table outside the pleasant, little cafe and order another coffee while typing up my notes from the start of Alba’s experience. Every so often I wander over and snap a few more pictures, the latest collection of men all too happy to arrange their exposed genitalia around the birthday girl’s semen-soaked form. Really though, I’ve already got all the lurid evidence I could ever need. It seems utterly unfathomable that she should be expected to keep this up all day!

To pin the point to this, as I make use of the cafe’s facilities around 11am… I realise that I hadn’t even considered what Alba would be expected to do about such needs. It doesn’t take long to receive and answer though: some 10 minutes later a laughing cheer goes up from the crowd. To my disgust I make out that they are celebrating a small river of liquid trickling out from between her thighs and washing through the splattered leavings of those among their number with the worst aim. The girl must have been holding out in utter embarrassment for as long as she could, before no option remained but to relieve herself in front of all these jeering dogs.

It was shortly after this that the town’s priest invited himself to share my table, ordering a glass of ruby wine for us both with a wave of his hand. I had seen him wander out from the church earlier on, idling around and chatting to those coming and going from the square. Dressed in a traditional Catholic cassock it perhaps should not have surprised me at all to see him hoist it up to reveal no underwear beneath, and proceed to take his own turn at the trough. The other men had even stepped aside respectfully to let him take what was clearly his favoured spot to unleash his seed: depositing it delicately and directly into the ‘v’ of Alba’s womanhood. Leading me to wonder whether, lack of penetration or not, there was a certain percentage of young ladies who woke up with swollen bellies several months beyond this ritual.

I ask the man of the cloth how he can condone and even participate in this ritual, while still holding stock with his faith. He smiles at me warmly, as if I am simply another inquisitive child at Sunday school; his voice deep, calm and yet perhaps, slightly condescending:

“But this is exactly what Santa Rocío gave her life for! In the dark times, the Church it stamps down on the people’s freedom. It makes rules and rules and rules on how to live clean and pure, without Sin. But she said love is not Sin. She offered her body freely, like Christ did… and said ‘pour your love onto me, pour out your sin, and then you can live pure’.

I saw the old man’s eyes glisten a little at this, as if it was a personal memory for him not just a part of the town’s mythos. Throughout my time here if nothing else, it is clear how important this story is to them, how integral to their view of themselves and the world.

“A little mountain town like this? Without love we have no community, no children… all our young ones move away to the cities. But La Pintura keeps us together. It binds us. It brings us closer in a way that nowhere else in the whole world feels.”

I ask him if the tradition makes the people here feel more open and relaxed in their sexuality then? He laughs and points to a balcony opposite. Following his finger I am greeted by a middle aged couple, leaning against the balustrade and engaged in rampant, energetic coitus. They are clearly watching Alba’s trial for inspiration and even wave down to others in the square, casually engaging in conversation without a single pause in their lovemaking.

“When everyone has already witnessed everything their neighbours have to offer, there is no fear, there is no jealousy.” The priest continues. “A man comes downstairs in his own home and finds his daughter bouncing in the lap of some local farm boy? He simply offers the boy a beer. A wife finds out her husband has been ‘taking liberties’ with his new secretary? She takes a couple of his colleagues out to the lake for a ‘picnic’. There is no anger there. No sense of shame and isolation.”

As alien as they seem… his words do stick with me. I had looked up the statistics before coming: Beso de Rocío does in fact have markedly lower reports of both sexual assault and domestic violence than the national average. Not that such crimes are completely absent but… I think of the drunken firstcomer that morning, and all the other damaged, lonely men who might stoop to violent acts, if not for this opportunity every week or so to release all their frustrations. Perhaps there is something there that Saint Rocío understood, but those who vilified her at the time did not.