¡Toma la Calle!: Two marches I shouldn't have joined

Hey guys! Here's the last post I'll put up about Sevilla. I'd have done so earlier, but internet was a tricky commodity at the monastery. Plus, using the internet at a monastery will rightly earn you the label "pansy monk poser", or in my case, however you would say that in Catalan. So, yeah.

Anyway, this post is dedicated to 2 events I had the unintentional pleasure of marching in. The first? The 15-M protest, a 15,000-person wave of angry socialists. The manifestación filled the better half of the old city center as they marched to City Hall, shown here:

Lesson learned: If you climb a lamppost, the photo will be better.

From a U.S. standpoint, I suppose this march would make more sense if I mentioned that unemployment across Spain is over 20% these days. Suddenly that 9% all-time high doesn't seem so bad anymore, eh, Carolinas? Some of the more entertaining signs being blazoned included the university group's "Here, let me wash your car with my college diploma" and the all-female group's"¡Estamos hasta los cojones con esa gente!" (Figuratively: "We've had it up to here with this government!", Literally: "We're up to our balls with these people!")

You get it? Because women don't have—
*ahem* Moving on.

This picture is part zombie movie, part Francisco de Goya. Actually, maybe all Francisco de Goya.

 
Here's a cool video from the protest, to give you an idea of what it was like to walk alongside these people... and by that I mean the awesome, chant and drum circle-loving, insult-throwing españoles:

The other "march" would be better categorized as a religious procession, because that is what it was. The Corpus Christi procession, in fact! I was accidentally caught up into it around a tight corner and dragged down half a kilometer of a narrow alley with no side streets. Oh, and did I mention that this alley was lined on both sides with people? Yep, devout sevillanos, watching the awesomely-dressed Semana Santa brotherhood members go by and wondering how the dumb gringo with the flip-flops and plaid shorts managed to get stuck alongside them. Good times. Here's a photo of these stylin'-and-profilin' católicos, and the epic banners they carry:

I did not even realize at the time that there were little bells on that one.

I will admit though, being procession-ed down that alley wasn't all bad. After all, I managed to snap a shot of this, the winner of Sevilla's Corpus Christi altar contest:

I would more accurately name this event "The 2000th Annual Mary Mother of God Beauty Pageant"

Epic? Yes, indeed. All in a day's work for a bumbling americano**.


**Note: whenever you see this word, you must say it in a George W. Bush accent... I had an Australian/Spanish friend say that to me in Valencia, and I've been cracking up ever since.