Auto De Fe' At Plaza Mayor

Sixteen-Eighty was brutal on saints and their hissing cats. A turgid June, thickened as it was by an immature sanguinary wine failed to quench the civil mob. Above the birthday cake façade,the pink and cerise porticos, the heavenly-frocked casements, the stucco - a tiered sibilance rises were the throng, in a sportive sweat, begets its feverish desires. The accused stand center-stage, as hairless as Sphinx garnished by sheens 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 painting, yet I am here now, and the square still seeps through a varnish of time. Suddenly eveing flaps a checkered flag. The plaza is suddenly 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. 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 place for only jubilation, were it not for the sotto voce hissing of these time-stretched hissing shadows.