Madrid a city of tolerance. Spanish Urlaub 1

 Madrid a city of tolerance.

(Note:  A person ´close to this blog writer´opined there is too much about holy stuff on this blog posting, and that I should cut a lot of the content out.  After review and consideration, I decided, I want to keep it as is.  

But if all the holy is too much for your delicate state dear reader, just skip down to the last two or three paragraphs.) 

Last Sunday week in Madrid they had a  procession for Corpus Christi.  This is a Catholic church feast day that is celebrated the Thursday two months after Easter.

Now the reason I explain that is, I came up a procession in the city of Madrid with bells and whistles and all sorts of holy the like of which I never saw in Ireland - even as a child; there were  lines and lines of priests and nuns.  And young priests and nuns too.

In fact the nearest I could think of to compare to this procession would have been pictures of ´holy processions´ in Ireland from the 1950´s.   Only it would not have been in 37C (or 98.6F)  weather - at 7.00 in the evening!

So as you can see in the photos below.... there they are with their procession including all the bells and whistles past the royal palace and the main cathedral in Madrid. Nobody bothered the participants and they bothered no one.

Check out the nuns above.  My grandaunt Mother Rose who as a nun who died back in the 1970´s at 92, did not have as much ´body coverage´ as these nuns above.  And these nuns are young too.  Don´t know who they are but perhaps an enclosed order (stay inside the convent walls by choice and pray a lot) of a very conservative variety.

And following the young likely conservative enclosed order nuns were....

The Señoras in black.   

The works, including mantilla and high comb in their hair, the lot.  But...

... judging from the not so long dresses and rather high heels of some of the members of this group of señoras, I would hazard a guess several of them could party as well as they could kneel and pray!  - I hope so anyway, then they´d have the best of both worlds.

And note... all this in  37C / 98.6F heat.

Now this group of lay men (i.e. not priets) were dressed in what appeared to as knights of the church.  I don´t know noth´en about noth´en, but I might surmise, that they are, or were, an arch conservative group of powerful lay men, the kind that like to keep all the power and keep it in secret.  Whether I am right or wrong  I would be delighted to add more information of the group if anyone can tell me about them.

Well if there is a shortage of trainee priests in the Catholic world, nobody told ´m about it in Madrid!

So there you have the holy procession with all the bells and whistles - and in all that heat.

Now the alert reader of this blog will note I started the blog posting with the phrase: ` Madrid a city of tolerance`.  And ´why?´you may ponder.  What is the connection to tolerance and this holy parade with all the bells and whistles?



Well I will tell you why!

All over the main areas of Madrid, as with the street corner where I stood to take these photos of the holy parade,  there are traffic lights.  But instead of the normal little pedestrian green man to go and red man to stop.  They often had little pairs of green/red men and green/red woman for the stop and go.  See below.

(I wanted to get a few more shots, but it was hard to photographs the traffic lights in the sunny weather, so I am glad I got this sort of OK shot at all!)

And it was so.  There were lots of gay and lesbian couples in the city and just like in the holy catholic procession from the 1950´s; nobody bothered the couples and they bothered no one either.

In fact right now going on in Madrid from June 23 to July 2nd there is a big global festival Pride World it is called.  And the city has indeed much to be proud of indeed that two so widely differing ´ways of being oneself´ are encompassed comfortably (from what I could see anyway) in the one not very big - but oh so hot - metropolis!

Olé Madrid!