Festivals of Western Europe: Festivals: 10. Festivals of Spain

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"Festivals of Western Europe" (1958) by Dorothy Gladys Spicer is a descriptive reference work cataloguing folk and religious celebrations, drawn from the tradition of mid-twentieth century popular ethnography. This excerpt covers Spanish festivals from New Year through Easter, documenting customs such as Epiphany gift-giving by the Three Kings, the blessing of farm animals on Saint Anthony's Day, Valencia's Fallas bonfire festival, Carnival, and the elaborate Holy Week processions of Seville. The work's central project is preservation of living folk practice: Spicer records the origins, ritual logic, and regional variations of each festival with concrete procedural detail — what objects are used, who participates, what sequence events follow. A distinctive feature is the attention to social and craft dimensions, as in the Fallas, where Spicer explains how district committees commission satirical effigies months in advance and compete for prizes, grounding spectacle in community organization. Seville's Semana Santa receives the most sustained treatment, with close description of the pasos (processional floats), the cofradías' pointed hoods, the hidden bearers, and the crowd's emotional eruption at La Macarena's appearance — conveying religious intensity without editorializing. The intended reader is clearly an outsider curious about European folk life rather than a specialist, and the tone throughout is engaged and vivid but non-analytical.

Festivals of Western Europe: Festivals: 10. Festivals of Spain

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