Inanimate objects with a human walk.

This is pretty cool, but I'm really tired, after only two half days. It seems like enough to me. These people do not get tired of it. Actually, they all say they are "muerte" after working all day and then going chasing through crowds to see a particular float turning a corner or a Virgen from a certain vista. A lot of people don't have to work during this period and some of them do this all day.

I just came back from the second night of hanging with my new friends, who are really cool, and watching 5 different processions, between 10:00 and 1:30.
Probably the most interesting one tonight was the one our friend Pablo was in. They were all surprised when I said I only met Pablo a couple minutes before he introduced me to them, on Sunday night. They said, oh, he does that. And one of the Joses mentioned a time when he went to meet Pablo and sat there waiting for half an hour, when Pablo showed up with two Japanese girls.
Sure enough, there was Pablo, who had been a nutty drunk dude picking up chicks for his birthday party two days before. He was dressed in an extremely ornate robe, with purple and embroidered with silver, and carrying a fancy pole with a candle on the end. He looked at us, but as they warned me, did not acknowledge us. His hermandad is one of the oldest ones, and is very serious. All the nazarenos/penitentes/guys with pointy hats/kkk-lookalikes were in black, and their capirotes were generally pointing straight up and orderly.
We were squeezed onto a narrow section of sidewalk, in a narrow meeting of streets that don't square off properly. Never have I seen crowds such as these be as silent, of their own accord.
One of the various things that fascinates me on some level that is more fundamental than my mind, is the way they make an inanimate object more human. The way the floats sway with a movement that can only be a human walk is just out of this world weird and cool. For me this goes against so much that I find de-humanizing in the world around me. The trend to make everything more automatic, more digital... This festival is ancient. It began previous to the industrial revolution, and even before the Renaissance, if the festival itself has been around as long as some of the hermandades.
Seeing a float go around a tight corner where two narrow streets meet is something people try to do. The costaleros underneath have to orchestrate their steps to turn it, which requires multiple shifting back and forth, like a car backing up and going forward numerous times to get into a parking spot. It takes about 5 minutes of being in one place, to turn it so they can continue going straight.
Unfortunately I missed Jose the costalero's hermandad. I feel really bad about that, because he was so excited about it, and was really sweet to me, excitedly explaining everything and showing me stuff yesterday. But Agustin brought me a little card - one of the ones that has a Jesus and a Virgen picture on it. The costaleros exchange these with friends they might see on the way.