Holy Week in National Catholic Spain: Urban space, art and history in Valladolid (1939-1949)

Abstract

This article looks at the (re)invention of Holy Week in post-Civil War Spain. Although clearly a “rite of victory”, Holy Week proved to be both durable and popular, a regular, annual event that became part of the social fabric of postwar provincial Spain. Taking the case of Valladolid, the article shows that Holy Week involved municipal and commerical interests from the start. The liturgies of Holy Week helped to define an emergent National Catholicism, which provided an alternative to Falangism from the very moment of victory. But the co-operation of town hall, diocese and, in Valladolid, a state cultural institution, the Museo Nacional de Escultura, also demonstrated a highly paternalistic conception of politics. Valladolid Holy Week was a clear example of invented tradition, collapsing historical time to evoke Catholic, imperial Spain. This apparent timelessness, with its “natural” social and religous order allowed a historicist recreation of “eternal” Spain, which contrasted sharply with fascism. In Valladolid, a key role was played by Baroque art. The article explores this mobilisation of Baroque art, which acted as a cultural shorthand for these intertwined aesthetic and political values. In its formality, its performance and display, Holy Week was entirely characteristic of National Catholicism. As an urban performance, however, Holy Week assumed a plasticity that allowed it change its meanings over time and to become the only “rite of victory” to survive the dictatorship.