The heartbeat of Francesc Macià can still be heard, felt in many Catalan hearts. This organ of the president, which was extracted from his body after his death in 1933 and preserved in an urn with formaldehyde, has turned out to be a traveler. The urn remained in the Palau de la Generalitat during the Republic and was taken to France in 1939, where it would change residence several times, until it was guarded by Josep Tarradellas, president in exile, who would bring it back home in 1979.
The heart was deposited with the remains of Macià , without the urn that kept it for so many years, which is still traveling, because it is one of the main pieces in the recently opened exhibition sponsored by the Diputación de Barcelona The foundations of self-government. Montserrat Tarradellas i Macià archive.
In Spain in the 21st century, the popular faith in all kinds of relics and superstitions has not diminished one iota. The prolonged drought in Catalonia is being fought with religious processions and prayers to this or that virgin, especially to that of Montserrat, perhaps due to the lack of initiatives from the Generalitat.
Many churches and hermitages guard relics, some of them unlikely, such as the one in Liria, in the province of Valencia, which Luis Carandell saw fit to include in his unbeatable Celtiberia Show, and which is nothing more than a feather from the wings of Saint Michael the Archangel. (Dont laugh.)
Teresa of Ãvila was not a stigmatized saint like, for example, Francisco de AsÃs, but this detail did not prevent her incorrupt body from being exhumed and dismembered nine months after her death in 1582. A priest named Gracián, present at the exhumation, was astonished to see “the high breasts” of the deceased saint, and immediately afterwards severed the left hand of the mummy, which was the first of the mutilations that her holy corpse would suffer, some with treachery and nocturnality.
The incorrupt miraculous hand of Teresa that adorned General Franco’s nightstand found shelter in the church of La Merced in the city of Ronda (Málaga). An arm of the saint traveled throughout the Spanish territory between August 1962 and August 1963, on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the Teresian reform.
The Spanish attachment to relics may be second only to that of the Italians, but even in the New World there are those who point to ways. In January 2018, the miraculously uncorrupted arm of Saint Francis Xavier left the Church of the Gesu in Rome to go on gigs across Canada to combat the crisis of faith for Catholics in that country, as well as attract new converts. .
Earlier, in 2001, Canadian believers were treated to a tour of the remains of—you guessed it—Saint Teresa of Avila, which drew more than two million fervent worshipers.
If it does not rain much and soon in Catalonia, it is very likely that this summer there will be more and more religious processions of a secular nature. Nor will there be a lack of sentences previously passed through the sieve of local political correctness. Meanwhile, patriotic candidates are crowding at the gates of heaven to be martyred among themselves as a previous unavoidable requisition before proceeding to the beatification, canonization and, who knows, dismemberment and distribution of relics throughout the territory.
Formerly, in some regions of the Caucasus, when a drought lasted longer than desirable, marriageable young women were gathered together and, yoked two by two under a yoke like oxen, they were led praying and screaming by a priest through rivers, swamps and puddles. Back in the 19th century, in Caltnaisetta, Sicily, the parishioners, dying of thirst, ripped off the golden wings of the Archangel Michael and replaced them with papier-mâché ones, for not having attended to his prayers. Decidedly, the archangel had better luck in Liria.
If it doesn’t rain soon and in abundance, anything can be expected this summer, perhaps in the form of secular miracles or the massive abandonment of faith in certain untouchable local saints. In any case, before a good downpour falls, let the Virgen de la Cueva get ready.
