Auto Da Fe At the Plaza Major

Auto-da-fé at Plaza Major Sixteen-Eighty was brutal on saints and their hissing cats. A turgid June, thickened as it was by an immature sanguinary wine that failed to quench the civil mob. Above the birthday cake façade, the pink and cerise porticoes, the heavenly-frocked casements, the stucco - a tiered sibilance rises where the throng in a sportive sweat, begets its feverish desires. The accused stand center-stage, as hairless as Sphinx garnished with sheen's of fear. Some contemplate the ornate state of their theatrical ruin. Some already lash their minds behind unfocused eyes. That was then; I see all this through a blood spattered prism, the square still seeps through a crimson varnish of time. Evening now flaps a checkered flag. The plaza is now a pitch for celebrating revelers. Real Madrid fans have surged out of the barra. Soccer balls are dribbled over cobbles. I imagine my hapless head plunging in and out of the heedless crowd. I am their sport, a candidate for a mocking inquisition perhaps? Meanwhile, the cats stare patiently, squeezed as they are into strips of sunset, a pink Iberian tongue of light that streaks the floodlit scene. This place could be a plaza for jubilation, were it not for the sotto voce hissing of these time-stretched unforgiving shadows above us.