Carnival Song and Society

Gossip, Sexuality and Creativity in Andalusia

Jerome R. Mintz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000180817
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Carnival songs resemble a tabloid newspaper in their verve, spirit and range of themes. They are a measure of social change and an annual summary of events and opinion. The songs involve considerable artistry and are renowned as well for their raucous humor and vulgar concerns. (Promiscuity and sexual misalliances are common subjects.) Banned by Franco during the Spanish Civil War, the Cádiz carnival began a revival in the 1960's following decades of repression. This fascinating book examines carnival song and society during the last years of the Franco dictatorship and the succeeding period of the new constitutional monarchy, when the Andalusians found their voice and Carnival enjoyed an extraordinary florescence. Songs from rural and urban carnivals in several locales throughout the province of Cádiz provide a compelling picture of Andalusian life in both troubled and more flourishing times.

Chapter 1
Carnival in a Rural Town

Benalup (Casas Viejas) 1966

In the town of Benalup, as in the capital, carnival is the major festival in the yearly cycle, involving months of preparation and rehearsal before the holiday This passion for carnival is not true of every town and city in the province. Alcalá de los Gazules, eighteen kilometers distant from Benalup, celebrates as its primary festival a yearly romeria (pilgrimage) in September to a countryside shrine dedicated to the Virgin of Alcalá, Maria de los Santos.¹ Benalup’s town carnival, unlike the romeria that devours the energy of nearby Alcalá, has no higher purpose than its social one. Its focus is not on miracles but on human foibles.

Carnival, carnival, how pretty carnival is,	Carnaval, Carnaval, qué bonito el Carnaval
four months of rehearsals just	cuatro meses ensayando
to come and sing to you about	para venirte a cantar
the little events of the year	los sucesillos del año
during the days of carnival.	en días de Carnaval.
Carnival, carnival, how pretty is	Carnaval, Carnaval, qué bonito
the carnival when I sing for you	el Carnaval cuando canto para ti
and criticize the rest.	y critico a los demás.
(Los Amarados, 1981, Benalup)

Town and Countryside

Benalup de Sidonia is a rural town of approximately 5,000 people in the southern part of the province of Cádiz.² A relatively new town, Benalup had developed in the previous century from a cluster of chozas (thatched huts), a hermitage (dating from the mid-sixteenth century), and an inn located at a crossroads leading south to Algeciras and Gibraltar. It was better known by its earlier folk designation, Casas Viejas (Old Houses).³ The growth of the town had been fostered by the sale of nearby common lands in the mid-nineteenth century. As parcels of the once public lands were resold and united with other parcels, hortelanos (gardeners) and day-workers were needed to cultivate the gardens and orchards that were fed by nearby springs and to sow the pasture lands in the campo (countryside). The location of the growing town at the outer boundaries of the townships of Medina Sidonia, Alcalá de los Gazules, and Vejer de la Frontera assured new settlers of seasonal work on the large estates that were distant from the other population centers.

In 1933 the town was the site of an anarchist uprising, and the name Casas Viejas became a symbol for rural injustice and martyrdom.⁴ Rural poverty, however, continued unabated. In 1966, three decades after the start of the civil war, Benalup remained a poor agricultural town whose lands were concentrated in the hands of a very few and without industry of any sort.

Benalup lies on a slope below the rim of an uneven plateau that extends the sixty-eight kilometers from the town to the capital, Cádiz. The eroded caves on the hillsides neighboring Benalup, a very few with faded prehistoric line drawings, testify that the area has been habitable for the last twenty millennia. Southward, below the town, lies the valley floor and the normally gentle rivers of Barbate and Celemin. At the far edge of the valley, some seventy kilometers distant by roadway, a narrow mountain chain shields Gibraltar from view. A remote corner of the landscape provides a tantalizing keyhole glimpse of the sea. To the south lies the Strait of Gibraltar and fourteen kilometers of open sea to the coast of Africa and the country of Morocco. The Strait is a migratory avenue for the seasonal passage of birds between the two continents.⁵ In February, when carnival often falls, waves of swallows, hoopoes and cuckoos pass over the Strait to nesting sites in Gibraltar and in the swamp land of the Laguna Janda.⁶ At month’s end, flights of storks begin, followed by kites soaring over the Strait with long pointed wings and by goshawks pumping with short powerful strokes. In March, almost as if to share in the remains of the prelenten feasting, vultures, snake buzzards and harrier eagles cross and light in the rocky cliffs of the mountains.

The countryside nearby Benalup is a mix of pasture and hillside, with scattered fields planted in shimmering green wheat. Cattle and sometimes brave bulls feed in the pastures, and herds of goats thread their way through narrow paths in the thick brush. Strands of wild cork trees lie scattered on the hillsides, while close to the town and fed by natural springs are gardens and groves. The irrigated gardens had been lined with fig, orange and quince trees until recent times, when it became more profitable to keep cattle and to plant a feed crop. The lands of Benalup, as well as Alcalá de los Gazules and Tarifa, had recently been declared as a cattle zone, which meant that the landowners were not obligated to sow crops (in contrast to Seville, for example, where landowners had to plant at least a percentage of their land). Dry farming was a particular gamble in these areas not because of the soil but rather due to the levante, the intermittent hot wind in the spring and summer that razes the wheat, barley, and chickpeas.

In comparison with the rich winter-green countryside, in 1966 the streets of Benalup appeared ragged. The two principal streets were set with cobblestones, but elsewhere the paths were unpaved and showed scant signs of municipal concern. Benalup, legally a hamlet pertaining to the township of Medina Sidonia, was not yet independent and had little power and few funds to act on its own behalf. A deputy mayor for Benalup was chosen by Medina’s mayor from among the two local councilmen selected in the municipal elections. For continuity most official matters were handled by a permanent administrative secretary also appointed by Medina.

There were few shops in Benalup and often as not a typical village store was the converted front room of an ordinary streetside house. The larger houses and the old mill in the center of town were made of stone and cement and capped with tile roofs. Many of the homes further up the lane, however, were chozas, huts made of thatch and cane and usually set on a low base made of mud, lime, and small stones. Along the short main street, there were a half-dozen bars where men took coffee in the morning and wine in the evening, and whiled away workless days playing cards and dominoes. There were two classes of wine sold: the common wines of the Barberá bodega in Chiclana and the wines of a higher category (usually in bottles) from Jerez.⁷ The campesinos drank the former from short plain glasses; the gentry drank the bottled wine from Jerez in wineglasses. One or two of the bars could boast of a new novelty – a black-and-white television set which featured a single state-run channel that was operational a few hours a day. The most popular programs were the bullfights beamed from Algeciras, Seville, or Madrid. There was a rickety movie theater on the main street which opened on the weekends and all too frequently featured Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan of the Apes.

The church was located at the village center where the two principal streets intersected. It was a physically imposing but architecturally undistinguished structure whose construction had been undertaken in 1915 to replace the earlier community’s small and crumbling rural hermitage. In front of the church was the alameda, the promenade where townspeople strolled up and back every Friday night. Couples walked locked arm in arm. Young men found occasion to salute attractive girls with piropos (compliments) as the strollers measured the chances of finding a novio or novia (sweetheart). On Sundays and fair days, for recreation and greater intimacy, couples and groups would take longer walks in the countryside.

The Community

Most of the population of Benalup were campesinos, landless workers who once hired out for the season or for a particular task during the agricultural cycle. A small number were considered hortelanos (gardeners) skilled in the agricultural arts, but many knew little more than gang labor in the fields. The failure of most of the landowners to sow their lands, and increased mechanization by the few who did, promised permanent unemployment for agricultural workers. Since the 1950s, the campesinos had been forced to look beyond the pueblo for employment. Many signed contracts to work for a term abroad in the fields and factories of other more industrialized countries. Campesinos were increasingly leaving the fields to become itinerant construction workers at the hotels and chalets being built to accommodate tourists along the Mediterranean. Commonly they signed on as peons but many quickly acquired the skill to be masons.

There were other local workers and artisans for whom demand had greatly diminished. The need for men skilled as woodcutters and corcheros (cork harvesters) was spinning into oblivion in the countryside, as was the place in town for artisans such as blacksmiths, bakers, and shoemakers. Sewing shoes had once been an important craft in the town, with several scores of men making boots for trade in city shops, but the success of factory-made shoes had reduced the market for handsewn boots, and there were now only a half-dozen shoemakers left in town.

A very few independent-minded men subsisted by dry farming a modest number of fanegas⁸ and keeping some milk cows. A handful of such haciendas lay on the mesa above the town and below on the hillside. Their efforts at surviving and supporting a family were prodigious. Since the land lacked irrigation, a yeoman farmer would dig a deep well on his property in order to plant crops that included tomatoes, potatoes, corn, onions, garlic, and sugarbeets. The sandy soil was hospitable to a variety of trees, including apple, pear, quince, almond and fig, as well as grapevines and even camomile. The milk from the cows would be carried daily to the stores, and the male yearlings would be sold. A couple of pigs and several laying hens helped their larder and added a few coins to purchase other necessary goods.

A handf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• 1 Carnival in a Rural Town
• 2 A Round of Criticism
• 3 Social Problems in the Repertoire of Los Llorones
• 4 The Rivalry
• 5 A Country Poet
• 6 Old and New Voices
• 7 Sexual Targets
• 8 Women and Carnival
• 9 Carnival in the Capital
• 10 The People’s Carnival in the Capital
• 11 Poet of the People’s Carnival
• 12 Trebujena
• 13 Epilogue: The Structure of Carnival Song and Celebration
• Other Works by Jerome R. Mintz
• Index