Murcia traditions : All Saints and All Souls, 1st and 2nd November

What are the traditions in Murcia?

This next week is the celebration of All Saints Day on the 1st November and All Souls day on the 2nd November. The 1st is a National Holiday, a red day, so most retail outlets and all public buildings and banks will be closed.

The fiestas of All Saints and All Souls have merged into that of Halloween to such an extent that the Catholic Church has started a campaign to try and bring a religious slant back into a festival which is rapidly becoming more about fancy dress, ghouls, ghosties and an opportunity for a party, than the religious observations around which it is based.

Although it could also be argued that All Saints and All Souls were hijacked from their Celtic roots by the Christian Church to start with!

There are dozens of  events being held around the region this weekend and over the early part of next week as Hallowe’en night becomes part of Spanish culture.

A bit of background information:

All Saints Day, or Todos Los Santos as it is known in Spain has its roots in the beginning of the Celtic New Year, Samhain, which takes place on the 31st October, The celts didvided the year into two parts, and this celebration is a time of transition from the end of the harvest to the dark of winter and the festival of the dead in which the souls of the departed are said to return to their homes.

When the Romans invaded the UK in 46BC they gathered the festival into their own annual calendar and it was celebrated throughout the Roman Empire.

By the 4th century it had evolved into a festival commemorating Christian martyrs and in 615 Pope Bonifacio converted a Roman Pantheon to a Christian church and dedicated it to "All the Saints."
From here on an annual day was dedicated to All the Saints, and in 741 the date was changed to coincide with the Celtic festival of Samhain, hijacking a date of Celtic significance and making it a Christian celebration, as was the fate of many pagan dates of significance.

So on the eve of the 31st, the Celtic festival of Samhein, became the start of the festival of All Saints on the 1st.

In 998, the French added a date of the 2nd November as a commemoration for the souls of the faithful who had departed and the 2 dates have been celebrated together since.

In Spain All Saints Day is  a day of great significance in which relatives will visit the graves of the dead, honouring them with flowers and the lighting of candles, often staying for many hours as family members visit and share the occasion.

Cleaning and repainting is done weeks in advance, with municipalities laying on extra bus services, staff and spending large sums of money on plants and decorations to honour the occasion, with this weekend being the biggest of the year for flower sales.

The flowers of the season- dahlias, chrysanthemums and carnations can be seen in special temporary flower markets which spring up in every town- the Murcian Plaza de Las Flores being the best known in the region, although the Carthaginian one in Paseo Alfonso XIII is a good size as well.  

You’ll also see candles stacked up high in the local supermarkets, red outer casings with the white candles within which are also taken to the cemeteries and lit for the dead.

Extra security staff and police are laid on in public areas as parking can become quite chaotic near to the cemeteries; in Murcia over 370 extra police have been drafted in to cope with the expected volumes of visitors, and most towns have laid on extra bus services.

Spain wouldn't be Spain without food coming into the equation somewhere, and true to form, sweet little cakes and pastries are made to be shared with visiting family.

Sweet huesos de santo, literally saint´s bones, which look like little ribbed tubes, are a calorific combination of marzipan, egg yolks and cream, cooked with sugar syrup and there are ‘buñuelos de viento, or ‘puffs of wind, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, like small sugary donuts, but lighter and just as delicious.
.
A Murcian speciality is a dish known as Arropes y Calabazate and has been made for centuries; a sweet dish obtained by reducing grape juice to achieve a sticky conserve, which could provide sweetness throughout the winter when there was no more honey to sweeten food and drinks. Peel and certain types of squashes and quinces were added to the mix, and the result is a unique Murcian product which is often eaten in conjunction with rice or cake bases.

This is eaten as part of a popular dish in which figs are simmered in the Arrope and eaten with Leche Frito or gachas de harina.(more calories)

It's an incredibly labour intensive dish to prepare , but if you'd like to try it, go into Murcia between now and the 9th November and in the little square of the Plaza de San Pedro, you'll find a special market by the doors of the old church, with booths selling sweets and arrope for you to sample, together with huesos de santo, pan de higo.(a sticky sweet fig preparation) and other seasonal delights.

You'll also often find Arrope on sale at artisan fairs throughout the year and on regional gastronomic taster menus.

In some areas, particularly the North-west of the region,  it’s traditional to light bonfires on the night of the 31st and sweet potatoes, bonitas are roasted and enjoyed in their jackets or made into another form of sweet, almost like a deep fried dumpling.

This is a weekend for family, so there are not as many cultural events as other weekends, the religious services on the Sunday taking preference over other pursuits, although with the inevitable march of consumerism, there are "nights of the witches" parties and celebrations in many youth centres and there will inevitably be large numbers of costumed witches roaming the bonfires on the 31st.

Finally, English language tours are being offered by turismo de Cartagena y Murcia to both Cartagena and Murcia, explaining the traditions in these two cities and visiting places linked to these two important nights of the year.

The cemeteries are actually well worth a visit, the larger ones in the cities with a number of impressive monuments and family burials are interesting in their own right, but this next week take on a new dimension. Go and have a look, it’s  a uniquely Spanish occasion.

Click to see this week's What's on Bulletin for a round-up of events across the region.