During Semana Santa (Holy Week) groups from each church in town build floats (essentially statues of Jesus nailed to wooden platforms) that the men carry, on their necks or heads, through the town. I missed this celebration because I chose to get out of Spain and go to the Balkans. (I still view this as a good choice because the entire country gets vacation during Semana Santa, and really, who wants to deal with that?)
Because I wasn't here to see the "real thing," Lourdes took me to Aguilar, about 45 km from Priego, to see the children's version. Groups of kids carried smaller versions of the floats through the streets of this smaller-than-Priego city. The entire town comes out to watch the kids as they march. It's like the Harrington Park Memorial Day parade except here the kids are carrying a wooden platform on their backs and the adults are playing the music (two bands...).
Aguilar was cute: we went to visit Lourdes's best friend, her husband and their ten-month-old. They're awesome parents because they are extremely interested in having their son learn English, they have Baby Genius Videos!, and play music, he has a drum and a trumpet. They want him to be smart and they're starting right away. Their apartment was really nice - they just put on an addition to the kitchen, added an office and a terrace. For lunch we had roast chicken, and they even found me a coffee flavored meringue (no wheat!) for dessert.
After lunch we walked around the town some more: the main plaza is octagonal, there were many bakeries and cafes (all of which were open, even though it was Sunday!). We also visited a church with a wooden arched roof over its nave. This was interesting to see because it still had the wooden chorus at the back and one of the Semana Santa floats was in a side chapel. After seeing the church, we went up a hill to see the "castle," which was nothing more than a few rocks. The views were incredible: Lourdes and her friends had fun trying to figure out which town was which.
We didn't wind up getting back to Priego until after 8pm (almost 9 hours after we left!). It was a fun, but tiring day. It never seemed to end because they kept forgetting to show me something really important, "Oh no! We HAVE to show Rachel this church....Oh no! We HAVE to show Rachel the castle. Rachel has to see the tower! The plaza!"
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