Abstract

HERNANDEZ-FERNANDEZ, Carlos. Playing with death to celebrate life: an ethnographic study of the pilgrimage of the coffins in Santa Marta de Ribarteme, Pontevedra, Galicia. Etnográfica [online]. 2024, vol.28, n.1, pp.25-50.  Epub Apr 18, 2024. ISSN 0873-6561.  https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.15047.

Since the mid-20thcentury, a number of religious and festive pilgrimages have been held in Galicia and Portugal in which symbols of a funerary nature were used as a form of offering to give thanks for miracles or to pray for them to take place. This symbolism has disappeared in many of these celebrations, although until 2019 it was maintained in the known as the pilgrimage of the coffins, in the Galician town of Santa Marta de Ribarteme. This type of ritual reflected the relationship that the inhabitants of this region have with death and its symbols. Faith, despair and the desire to avoid death constitute the essence of this rite which in recent years was in a phase of profound, polemical and revitalising changes, and which was banned in the process of a dialectical confrontation between the church and other agents involved. In this article I intend to describe ethnographically this rite performed for the last time, with the approval of the church, in 2019.

Keywords : funerary rituals; pilgrimage; burial; ritual; procession.

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