Date on Senior Honors Thesis

5-2023

Document Type

Senior Honors Thesis

Degree Name

B.A.

Department

Anthropology

Author's Keywords

Granada, romería, San Cecilio, pilgrimage, religious festival, Spain

Abstract

The romería de San Cecilio is an annual, local short pilgrimage and celebration of the patron saint of Granada, a city in Andalusia, Spain. The romería takes place at the Abbey of Sacromonte, a monastery built on top of the site where San Cecilio’s remains were found as part of the famous discoveries of the Lead Books of Granada in the late sixteenth century. These books were ultimately declared to be Islamic forgeries, yet the romería persists today as a granadino, or Granadan, tradition. Consisting of both a Mass at the Abbey as well as a popular celebration, the romería is attended by a variety of groups, including the municipal government, the clergy of the city, locals, and tourists. In this thesis, I use publicly available documents (including videos) to describe these groups’ perspectives on the contemporary romería, and also criticisms of those perspectives. To contextualize these perspectives and criticisms more fully, I draw upon the history of the romería’s beginnings in sixteenth and seventeenth century Granada, the era immediately following the embattled transfer of power of Islamic Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in the late fifteenth century. I analyze these multiple discourses through sociocultural theories: theories of ritual and pilgrimage developed by Victor and Edith Turner, John Eade, and Michael Sallnow, and theories of confluence. I round out my analysis by comparing the understanding offered by these theories with the only contemporary analysis of San Cecilio’s romería, demonstrating how the obscurity of this analysis belies its usefulness. Ultimately, I show how the romería functions as a complex site in the (re)production of granadino identity: the differing perspectives and interpretations I analyze do not vitiate the romería, but rather invigorate it.

Lay Summary

The romería de San Cecilio is an annual, local short pilgrimage and celebration of the patron saint of Granada, a city in Andalusia, Spain. The romería takes place at the Abbey of Sacromonte, a monastery built on top of the site where San Cecilio’s remains were found as part of the famous discoveries of the Lead Books of Granada in the late sixteenth century. These books were ultimately declared to be Islamic forgeries, yet the romería persists today as a granadino, or Granadan, tradition. Consisting of both a Mass at the Abbey and as a popular celebration, the romería is attended by a variety of groups, including the municipal government, the clergy of the city, locals, and tourists. In this thesis, I use publicly available documents to describe the groups’ differing perspectives on the romería, and also criticisms of those perspectives. To contextualize these perspectives and criticisms more fully, I draw upon the history of the romería’s beginnings in sixteenth and seventeenth century Granada, the era immediately following the embattled transfer of power of Islamic Granada to the Catholic Monarchs in the late fifteenth century. I treat the differing perspectives as multiple discourses, and argue how sociocultural theories of discourse, ritual, pilgrimage, and tourism help make full sense of them. In doing so I bring in the only contemporary analysis of San Cecilio’s romería, demonstrating how the obscurity of this analysis belies its usefulness. Ultimately, I show how the romería functions in a complex way to reproduce granadino identity: the differing perspectives and interpretations I analyze do not vitiate the romería, but rather invigorate it.

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