El Lunes de Aguas - or a rainy day with Spanish meat pie

Spain has many traditions and many public holidays – even a little bit too much. The Semana Santa has just ended but they are already celebrating again: this time the so called Lunes de Aguas. Note that this tradition exist solely in the province of Salamanca. The literal translation of Lunes de Aguas would be Monday of Waters, but that doesn’t make much sense. I was told that the name comes from the petticoat of the prostitutes they were wearing under their skirts, in Spanish enagua. The Lunes de Aguas is celebrated always on Mondays – logically –, and it is always the first after the Resurrection Day. This time, it is the 4th of April.

What is this tradition about and where does the name come from?

Lunes de Aguas is a tradition that dates back to the XVI. century, the time of the King Felipe II, who was known to be a very catholic man. He realised that sexual debauchery took control over the city of Salamanca, specifically regarding the student’s life. Therefore, he decided to enact a law, which was about forbidding prostitution during Semana Santa in the city and exile the prostitutes to the other part of the river Tormes so that the man would not be distracted from the holy week. During that time, the “Padre Putas” was in charge of taking care of them, and afterwards, when Semana Santa had ended, of taking them back to the city on boats. They could not cross the Roman Bridge because they were living in sin.

After a week of deprivation, the whole city, including the regular inhabitants were happy to see them again, so they gathered on the riverbank to wait for the arrival of the prostitutes, which was later followed by a huge celebration, where they were drinking and eating together.

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Of course, the law itself does not exist anymore, but the people of Salamanca, and in the surrounding areas, still take the tradition very seriously – so seriously that all my classes were cancelled and also afternoon classes at the university.

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I don’t know if it used to be part of the original celebration or not, but today it is very typical to eat hornazo together with one’s friends on the shore. The hornazo is a Spanish meat pie that can be stuffed with pork, chorizo, boiled eggs, tuna ect.

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Until this day, I was convinced that I had never tried hornazo before, but I had to realize that we eat it quite often with the family of my boyfriend. The thing is that they had never told me before what was the name of it. Anyhow, this year’s Lunes de Aguas is probably exclusively about the hornazo for everyone, since it has been raining the whole day. I would have really liked to follow the tradition, but I don’t think many people are on the riverbank right now. My boyfriend told me that when this happens, they relocate the celebration into people’s flats and instead of sharing everything with the whole city, Lunes de Aguas becomes nothing more than a simple flat party.

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