Little Sailors on Leave

In this week’s Camino a Ítaca, a look at a piece of Spain that is in flux. Not-so-slight shifts in social contexts, yet some adherence to the norm. Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo) 

Personally, I miss the
little sailor suits. They are one of those small pieces of disappearing Spain,
like bares de toda la vida, that are quietly slipping away as tastes evolve. While
I’m sure the parents were somewhat well meaning, but the years of therapy provoked
by looking back on those photos surely tells a different story.

When I first arrived here
in Extremadura I remember being baffled by the little white suits with mariner
capes in all the springtime shop windows. I asked myself, why were they selling
little sailors costumes here in this landlocked region so far away from the
sea? Was it some sort of noncoastal yearning for the ocean?

And then communion season
began. The weekend streets were flooded with those suits from the shop windows.
Crowds of young boys looking like little sailors on leave, anxiously trying not
to get dirty, tacitly obeyed their smartly dressed parents drinking cañas (little beers). The
little girls looked even more uncomfortable, dressed in impossible looking
wedding dresses that made climbing stairs and even sitting down at the
restaurant difficult.

Then I remember the
polemic that was raised when a travel writer from the New York Times wrote that
children in Spain looked like colorized photographs from the past for the way
that they were dressed. The uproar and indignation was akin to chorizogate when
the British chef, Jamie Oliver put chorizo in his paellas. Yet when you looked
around, you had to admit that the Times writer wasn’t entirely off the mark in
her observation.

But tastes change and
styles evolve. The sailors on leave are far and few between these days. Now on
the streets it seems that the style has moved more towards the smart casual
style favored by peperinos at their summer rallies. Little neocayetanos with pastel
colored shirts and light sports jackets, sometimes even with the sleeves rolled
up, look much more comfortable, preppy with just a hint of modernity.

The girls however haven’t
been lucky enough to undergo the 2.0 makeover. Their dresses have only become
more ornate, if possible, somewhat disturbingly making them seem even more like
underaged brides.

But beyond the ornate
ostentatiousness of it all, what remains a mystery to someone like me from
outside is why they even do it at all? I have yet to hear a child say they
actually enjoy catechesis and the borderline abuse of being told that their
friend’s two mommies will spend eternity in a vat of boiling sulfur in
purgatory. In fact, what I more often hear is that they never want to go to
another mass again. From the outside it seems like some sort of twisted revenge
on the part of the parents. If I had to suffer through this, you do too.

It would be consistent if
these people were in fact believers, initiating their children into the
catholic faith, but the overwhelming majority will not set foot in a church
again until the next funeral. In a way, making fun of true believers. According
to the CIS, less than 19% of the population declare themselves as practicing
Catholics yet almost 50% of Spanish kids will take the first communion.

Blessed indeed are the
incoherent.