Location: Calahorra, La Rioja, España
Soul Site: Iglesia de San Francisco
Alimento: Piquillo Peppers
Highlights: Permanent exhibition of Pasos of Semana Santa + Calahora Roman history tour
Sunday, 25 September, 2022
Our first themed Project post. A test run, if you will! I promise these will be intentional and shorter to read. And I am so excited!
Two Fulbrighters from our cohort are stationed and living in Calahorra, a small pueblo of less than 25,000 people. That also makes it the second most populous city in La Rioja behind Logroño's just-over 150,000...so that's quite a leap! They kindly invited us to hop on the train Sunday morning for a little tour of their new stomping groups and to check out the pueblo's annual pepper fair. Calahorra is agriculturally based and known as the vegetable city, apparently. I spotted multiple Veggie-themed street art pieces, and that made me very happy.
A plaza in the center of the town was lined with pepper product vendors (how many times will I use the word pepper in this post?) who were adorably eager to have us sample any product we happened to make eye contact with on little chunks of bread or regañas (crunchy, bland crackers, often made with sesame, that are the perfect vessel for a bite of a pintxo, and also have replaced Saltines as my belly-soothing snack). Pepper paté, pepper and cheese spread, char-roasted peppers, cheese-stuffed piquante peppers. My taste buds were salsa dancing. I had basically gotten off the train and been offered six or seven bites of heaven. I have enjoyed pepper paté on my sandwiches nearly every day since.
Vendors setting up in the morning for a day of incredible sales, I'm sure. Thanks for the samples!
After browsing the stalls for a few minutes, we tried to visit the Vegetable Museum. Upon finding it was closed for the week, we stopped instead inside the Church of San Francisco, which is not the town's main cathedral but is now being used to permanently exhibit various historic pasos (floats) used during Holy Week processions as well as Monte Sacro, twelve small pieces representing Jesus' public life, death, and resurrection in miniature. From what I understand, the church was founded in the 1500s.
Church of San Francisco, which now houses the museum.
A paso depicting the Last Supper. Wonder how much this one weighs?
Standing around in the back of the church after lapping the floats on display, someone commented on the high quantity of intricately-carved faces present in these pieces of art. Jesus, Mary, the Apostles. The statues' facial expressions were arresting. Like many crucifixes I remember from my youth, the eyes seemed to follow you even as you walked on by. Not in a creepy way; it’s just as if they were curious—maybe more so than you about them.
"Catholics are a lot more into iconography than other types of Christians,” one in our group commented. After a bit of research into this note, I found something that seems to clarify the intentionally jarring and distinct style of this form of art (which, to refer to a very long discussion in one of my Spanish lit classes, is not merely art for art’s sake):
“…Humans learn by art and by the visual input. Jesus Christ did not become incarnate through audio alone or through a hologram….even in private religious devotion outside Mass, icons are necessary to contemplate on God’s glory and raise our senses up to this glory…” (McIntosh at Medium)
I am not certain if what we were viewing were officially icons, but regardless, this is something to ponder. If they are meant to necessitate contemplation, the hushed conversation we found ourselves in at the back of this old, old church sure resembled some sort of interior processing we’d all voiced. Effective or antiquated? A few crumbs of the divine? Again: something to ponder.
As the conversation continued, an older man who seemed to be supervising the museum approached our group and eagerly offered us a stack of brochures from Holy Week in 2020. He explained a bit about the current use of the pasos, surely delighted by this group of 22 year olds gathered here on a random Sunday, before strolling back through the hall. It was charming to witness the pride with which he held this role as steward of this small but powerful space—a pride which very much echoed that of each pepper vendor I had the pleasure of meeting.
After this sweet set of moments, we decided we were hungry for more peppers, so we trekked back to the main square to sample one of the spots on Calahorra's official pepper brochure pepper tour map. We ended up ordering rounds of creamy, meat-stuffed piquillo peppers. Oftentimes, I don't care to know exactly what constitutes all of these creamy mixtures in Spain, because they sure taste good and I am always a fan of sweet and savory flavors coming together.
Overall, an excellent mini-adventure in the vegetable village. I hope to be back when I need some more smiles and another tin or two of that pâté.
Scenes from the cook-off.
Someone had taken to her garage!
Utter concentration.
A cute puppy we saw in the square!
We also accidentally stumbled upon a triathlon going on this morning. Fun fact, when you finish races in Spain, you get tortilla de patatas and bread! And beer, if I remember correctly. Cheers to that.
More alimentos & citations below:
Info on Church from La Rioja Turismo here.
More info on Calahorra's Roman history & what's up with the peppers from Britannica here.
Highly recommend this opinion piece for more on iconography in the Orthodox and/vs. Latin Churches. Robert Mixa, Education fellow at Word on Fire Institute.
Quoted text from this article, which is also great. Aidan McIntosh for Catholicism Coffee via Medium.
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